2020 《Us Against You》
Period
2020. 4. 17 – 2020. 8. 30
Organized by
Gyeonggi Cultural Foundation
Hosted by
Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art
Artists
Byungjun Kwon, Kyuho Kim, Jinah RohSamson YoungSonia Khurana, Xuezhe Shen, Acrobatic Cosmos, Art Labor, Woosung Lee, Jangwon Lee, Jinkyoung Jun, Part-time Suite, Yunju Hwang
Curated by
Sooyoung Lee
Supported by
SAMHWA PAINTS
The title Us Against You implies that ‘we’ share the world we live in with ‘many other entities different from us.’ It also means that we are already related with you in so many ways.
Who are ‘we’ as human? What makes anyone 'human'? It is not too difficult to consider a cyborg, who has a machine inside her body such as an artificial heart, to be human. It is, on the other hand, never easy to define the boundary between human and non-human. No matter how hard we try to stop new virus. it breaks the barrier and enters us. Our personal information, which is identifiable with ourselves, get leaked no matter how cautiously we guard them. There is no way to prove that we are today the same being as what we were yesterday. The way we construct a human subjectivity keeps changing. We are material-informational individuals constantly re-constructed.
Then who are ‘you?’ You come from different places, sing in different languages. You have differently shaped bodies. And often, you exist outside the legal boundary. In spite of these trivial 'differences', you begin to be visible only when one steps outside Korea, maleness, political citizenship, straightness and finally human-centeredness. ‘You’ are strangers, women, plants and animals, machines and the earth.
At Us Against You, the audience will meet those who they have to live together with as neighbor, and explore the kinds of coexistence and collaboration they offer. At Us Against You, the audience will see the changing world and diverse entities in it, and the ways of collaboration they bring to the world through the participating artists’s eyes and voices. The exhibition will be not only the very picture of the daily lives of us and you but also a world to produce coincidences, actions and interdependent relationships.
Who are ‘we’ as human? What makes anyone 'human'? It is not too difficult to consider a cyborg, who has a machine inside her body such as an artificial heart, to be human. It is, on the other hand, never easy to define the boundary between human and non-human. No matter how hard we try to stop new virus. it breaks the barrier and enters us. Our personal information, which is identifiable with ourselves, get leaked no matter how cautiously we guard them. There is no way to prove that we are today the same being as what we were yesterday. The way we construct a human subjectivity keeps changing. We are material-informational individuals constantly re-constructed.
Then who are ‘you?’ You come from different places, sing in different languages. You have differently shaped bodies. And often, you exist outside the legal boundary. In spite of these trivial 'differences', you begin to be visible only when one steps outside Korea, maleness, political citizenship, straightness and finally human-centeredness. ‘You’ are strangers, women, plants and animals, machines and the earth.
At Us Against You, the audience will meet those who they have to live together with as neighbor, and explore the kinds of coexistence and collaboration they offer. At Us Against You, the audience will see the changing world and diverse entities in it, and the ways of collaboration they bring to the world through the participating artists’s eyes and voices. The exhibition will be not only the very picture of the daily lives of us and you but also a world to produce coincidences, actions and interdependent relationships.
주요작품
Xuezhe Shen
Stranger series
inkjet print, 2014-2018
Xuezhe Shen’s photographs exist where ‘we’ and ‘you’ collide. His choice in the objects and methods of his photographs are quite free and honest. His photographs, from his wife wrapping herself with a blanket after turning off the heater to Ghanaian workers sitting at the tail end in a restaurant feeling uncomfortable, are overwhelmed in greyish blue light. It may be the color of the dusts in the factory area, or the color of the city built with cement. How can ‘we’ and ‘you’ look into each other’s eyes through these photographs?
Byungjun Kwon
Forest of Subtle Truth 4 (The lullabies of the multicultural family)
head sets, location recognition system, 2019
In Forest of Subtle Truth series, the audience immerses herself in the sound she hears through a headphone set on the spot where she stands. The headphone set cuts out all the other sounds around her. The fourth version of the series, Forest of Subtle Truth 4 collects and records the lullabies of the multicultural families from a village in Hongsung, Chungcheongnam-do Province. Mothers from Vietnam, Uzbekistan, Russia, Philippines and China sing lullabies in their mother tongues. Their voices are diverse and beautiful. I hope that the day will come soon when people envy the children for their fluency in their multicultural mothers' languages and even the word 'multicultural' is not needed any more. Supported by Paradise Culture Foundation
Hwang Yunju
H’s Dishware
old dishes, 2016-
H’s Dishware is a used-dish shop which Hwang Yunju intermittently runs. People bring their old dishes and so forth and tell her their stories, for which they can exchange them with different ones. No one evaluates used dishes according the values of memories and experiences: they are just junk for recycling. For the artist, however, they are objects that hold stories and warm food. Through Hwang Yunju’s work, old dishes gain new exchange values not for their worth as products
Samson Young
We are the World
Video, 8-channel sound installation 5:26, 2017
The chorus members of the oldest union labor in Hongkong still sing the song with all their hearts. Sound artist, Samson Young paradoxically asked the chorus to sing the song without sound. Nonetheless the song still reminds us of the aching hope we once had and the more aching reality of today—the reality that “We are the world. We are the children. We are the ones to make a brighter day.”
Sonia Khurana
Lying down/ logic of birds
bill board, 2006 – 2009
Sonia Khurana was born in India in 1968. She studied art in England and Netherlands and currently works in New Deli. In her representative work Lying down/ logic of birds, she lies down on the ground of public space such as a plaza or a cemetery surrounded by pigeons. In doing so, she refuses and resists the predetermined gender roles of the patriarchal society. For her, feminism is not simply a style but a philosophy of life, a moral attitude and a political tool.
Jinah Roh
Mater Ex Machina
interactive robotics, mixed media, 2019
Mater Ex Machina already has the author's mother's face and voice. But the robot goes further: It copies our facial expressions and learns our emotions through deep learning with desire to become more like humans. Machines constantly learn and try, just like mothers who constantly give and give to their children. We may not know for sure if the machine mother does have emotions or not, but it is certain that the boundary between machines and human being is getting blurry since we are deeply touched by the machine mother.
Jinkyoung Jun
The inside of a yard
mixed media, 2015-2019
Jinkyung Jun has painted many pictures of Korean political situations such as Daechuri, Kangjeong Village, Yongsan tragedy, Hope Bus and the sit-in site of Cort Cortec. When the sit-in site was demolished, she moved her workshop to the EPS, a small exhibition site in Kyungui-sun common space. The EPS is a common space for relay-exhibition, made by a group of people who hoped that it would be a place where artists could freely hold exhibitions without grants from the government. Her workshop, a small structure built in the same form as the EPS, has a place in a public museum for a short while. But it is there only temporarily without any guarantee for the future, just like the Kyungui-sun common space.
Jangwon Lee
Wilson
brass, zinc-plated steel sheet, electronics, manufactured software, 2020
Today, you can say that the future of human kind depends upon the development of computer technology. Jangwon Lee finds in technical evolution of OS what the future will look like. The artist, however, imagines that the future OS moves on its own and shines in golden light. This image was created by data-based motion technique, visualizing the sun in the cosmos. Thus, he believes that the future OS will be trustworthy and altruistic like the sun which gives limitless energy throughout all four seasons. Now we feel happiness under the warm sun but in the far future we may sing in praise of the generous OS. The title, Wilson comes from the movie Cast Away. In the movie, the main character, left alone in a deserted island, is befriended only by a volley ball named Wilson, the sports brand that produced it. Wilson is also the name of the AI which Jangwon Lee created himself.
Woosung Lee
Candlelights
drawing animation, sound, B&W, 4:46
Woosung Lee draws objects and situations from his everyday lives. Thus his drawings naturally captures contemporary events and moments of the lives of his generation. They are like cuts from comic books, full of wits. The cell phone carried by the artist without any specific intent captured the world of unity which momentarily yet certainly existed. At the time many of us had to ask “Can this ever change the world?” This childish question disappeared into scoffs yet has left a strange yearning. Candlelight may not be eternal but it proves that a community can be formed when we acknowledge the importance of interdependence and sympathy with others.
Art Labor
Jrai Dew Hammock café
Kites, hammocks, LED sign, Corrugated iron sclupture, 2020
Art Labor is an artist collective based in Ho Chi Min City. While the members, Arlette Quynh-Anh Tran, Thao Nguyen Phan, and Truong Cong Tung, do their own works individually, they gather frequently and collaborate on various projects, expanding their artistic horizon. In Us Against You, a hammock on which you can sit and drink coffee, pictures made with coffee, rice biscuit that is very much like Korean rice cracker and the kites which Jrai people and Joan Jonas, American artist, made together are exhibited. Under the shade prepared for us to rest for a while, let's have bitter sweet coffee and talk together. About us and Jrai people, and about coffee and dews.
Acrobatic Cosmos
Optimal Gestures
3-channel sound installation, mixed media 4:26, 2020
Acrobatic Cosmos is a project team whose members are Hyunseon Son, Jiyoung Yoon, Seoyoung Chang. Jiyoung Yoon is a sculptor, Seoyoung Chang mostly creates video and Hyunseon Son paints. Each of them uses different medium for their art but when they feel that they share a certain sentiment they get together and collaborate. In Us Against You, they share the sentiment of loneliness, which is rather surprising. We feel lonely when we realize that we cannot look at each other perfectly simultaneously but that we can only partially understand each other. Furthermore, which ‘part’ of you will be seen by me is decided totally by accident.
Kyuho Kim
Us Against You
Graphic Design, 2020
Even though the title Us Against You was not strictly demanded upon him, graphic designer Kyuho Kim tried harder than any one else to portray Us Against You. His first draft was a kind of standardized hue circle symbolizing multiculture. Eventually it evolved into an aurora-like graphic in which everything and every color rolls down and mixes allowing all sorts of changeable variations. Now we have a rainbow even more vivid than before.
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