The Story Behind “Language Violence”

The Words That Once Hurt Me Became the Art I Created

For more than twenty years, I carried wounds shaped by verbal violence — from school, from family, and from the places where I once expected warmth.

Those experiences eventually became the source of my illustration series Verbal Violence, a body of work that transformed long-buried pain into visual language.

In my adolescence, isolation and hurtful words surrounded me like a closed world. Later, in adulthood, I came to understand that some of the harshness I received from family also came from their own unhealed fears — a lack of love unconsciously passed down through generations. Understanding this did not erase the wounds, but it allowed me to see them with compassion.

Art became the place where those experiences could be held, examined, and ultimately reshaped.

The sensitivity shaped by these experiences gave me the ability to portray subtle emotional textures — the quiet forms of hurt, and the strength that grows beyond them.

This series eventually received a Bronze Cube at the ADC Annual Awards in New York, led to representation by an international illustration agency, and marked a turning point in my creative journey.

But more importantly, it taught me that self-compassion is a powerful force:

we cannot change the past, yet we can decide what meaning it leaves behind.

Verbal Violence is not only about pain.

It is about the possibility of transforming pain into clarity, and clarity into art.