In the field of linguistics, the term “mora” refers to a unit shorter than a single syllable; in the artist’s work, Mora refers to her paintings, referencing the temporal unit of time as the building block of narrative. As Kang began her artistic training in painting, the Mora series holds a place of special significance in her body of work. Even the grid form, which makes up the bulk of the series, is derived from the boundaries of a single sheet of paper —the most basic unit of drawing; and the themes at hand, from individual subjectivity to time, balance, and more, are also based on the expanded concept of painting as both medium and window.

Viewing meok —black ink used in traditional Korean painting and calligraphy —not just as a single color but rather “a material of possibility, closer to a platform or the ground itself,” the artist layers and smears different tones of meok —or black combined with other colors —onto paper or silk, allowing the passage of time to reveal itself through the traces of the translucent layers.