Carving Between Worlds: Deborah and Choi Yoonsook on Marble, Identity and Cultural Belonging

In Pietrasanta, under the grey-white shadow of the Apuan Alps, marble dust floats through the air like a kind of snowfall. Sculptors from around the world come here for its quarries, its centuries of craftsmanship, and the quiet rhythm that surrounds stone. It’s in this corner of Tuscany that the paths of Deborah, a translator and student of Korean language, and sculptor Choi Yoonsook meet.

Ego -6M by Choi Yoon Sook

A Studio Between Languages and Stone

Deborah studies Korean through the Online King Sejong Institute, but since summer 2024, she trades books for chisels. In Pietrasanta, she assists Korean sculptors working in Italian studios, helping with translation, daily coordination and Fine Arts Authentication. One of them is Choi, soft-spoken, observant, and completely absorbed in her work.

Between the noise of the machines and the pauses of translation, Deborah found that communication often happened without words. “Working here, I realised culture isn’t just in language,” she says. “It’s in how someone touches the material, how they shape silence into form.”

Choi Yoonsook: Sculpting Between Two Worlds

 Choi explains that what first brought her to Italy was marble itself. In Korea, she had worked mostly with wood and clay, but marble carried a different presence, dense, patient, alive. That material curiosity became the reason she stayed.

Face by Choi Yoon Sook

Life and work here haven’t always been simple. She mentions the difficulty of moving large works, the cost of exhibitions, the slow rhythm of the art world. “Many times the problem is movement, money… even if something works, it’s difficult. I tried a lot, I travelled, I presented, but it’s still not easy,” she says with a small smile.

Yet she stays. Her sculptures hold a mix of restraint and tension, a balance between Korean sensibility and Italian craft. The forms are precise, the surfaces calm, the voids deliberate. Through them, she continues a dialogue between the two cultures that shape her life.

Deborah: Translating Beyond Words

Deborah grew up in Italy but was drawn to the structure and depth of the Korean language. Translating for artists like Choi taught her that art and language work in similar ways, both demand patience and respect for silence.

She says Italian and Korean ways of expression differ deeply. “Italian art often shows emotion openly,” she explains. “Korean art keeps emotion inside,  it’s there, but quieter.” Choi’s work, somewhere between those two worlds, reflects that tension beautifully.

Material as Memory

For both women, marble represents more than material, it’s permanence. Deborah notes that unlike clay, marble doesn’t forget. Every decision remains visible. Choi agrees that marble teaches discipline and humility. It asks the artist to slow down, to let the form emerge naturally.

Farfalla -II by Choi Yoon Sook

Her sculptures don’t announce themselves. They invite stillness. The smooth, skin-like surfaces and carefully shaped voids echo both the Korean sense of space and the Italian tradition of form.

Where Cultures Meet

The story of Choi and Deborah is not one of contrast but of quiet coexistence. In Pietrasanta, the connection between Korea and Italy isn’t shaped by theory or words; it lives in daily work: lifting, sanding, cleaning, and the small gestures that pass between them. The exchange happens through repetition, through the effort to understand without always speaking. A Korean sculptor carving Italian marble, an Italian student writing in Korean, both learning from the other. In the end, what remains is not difference but continuity, formed slowly in stone and shared time.