The World, the Stage, and the Quiet After

Alternating POV: Dora & Soo Yeo

Soo Yeon

The morning after the press conference felt like waking up after a tidal wave. The silence was too loud. And yet… she was beside me.

Not in bed — not yet. But near. On the couch with her legs tucked under a blanket, sketching something in her notebook with quiet a focus.

“Are they still outside?” she asked, eyes still on the page.

I peeked through the blinds.

“They multiplied overnight.”

She smiled faintly. “Fame has a weird echo.”

So did love — I was beginning to learn that. Ours now came with microphones.

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Dora

The backlash came with surgical precision.

Two galleries postponed my shows. One, here in Seoul, which released a statement saying I’d “compromised the integrity of contemporary Asian art.”

But I also woke up to messages from Paris, Lagos, and São Paulo. Young artists who said they’d never seen a woman own her narrative in front of the world.