21 Oct 2010

MOUTH TO MOUTH TO MOUTH: contemporary art from Korea

Artists: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES, Minouk Lim, Che, Onejoon, Sung Hwan Kim

Curators: Ji Yoon Yang and Ana Nikitovic

Mouth to Mouth to Mouth brings together the compelling works of five contemporary artists from South Korea.

The exhibition addresses questions on the notion of national identity, generated by a narrative of modernization within Korean society. Although the exhibition presents the artworks from a specific geographical region, it is neither a survey, nor does it construct a particular historical narrative. Instead, it engenders a space for alternative narratives which purposefully diverge from the official Korean epic of dynamic economic success and aims to recognize thirst for new voices.

Due to the intensive industrialization in South Korea since the 1950's, public consciousness of national identity has become conflicted over the issues of race, gender, family values, etc. Contemporary artists from Korea have provided critical views within the social situation of the constant mythification of reality. By presenting artistic positions that, each in their own way, relate to a cultural, political or social context of modern Korea, this exhibition faces the ethnocentric assumptions in contemporary art discourse. In particular, the exhibition responds to the complexities of identification and positioning what has been described as 'Korean contemporary art.'

The title of the exhibition is inspired by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's seminal video Mouth to Mouth from 1975. In this work, Cha explores the potentials and limitations of her mother tongue through the silent articulation of Korean vowels. The noise which disrupts the picture may symbolize the loss of language through time. The discourse of Korean Cultural Diaspora of 1970's and 80's in Cha's works has been evolved into one of globalism in the 21st century. Selected artworks in the exhibition reconstitute her conceptual art practice to mediate current social relations, creating a conversation with Cha's linguistic and tautological approaches.

Minouk Lim's SOS – Adoptive Dissensus is a video documentation of a performance, which invites audiences on a boat trip along the Han River to listen to personal stories of lovers, prisoners and demonstrators against the live background of Seoul. Translated into Serbo-Croatian, two works of YOUNGHAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES, Samsung Means To Come and My Pretty Peacenik, convey evocative stories about sex, violence, capitalism and ideologies. Che, Onejoon documents, photographs and archives the aftermath of the recent withdrawals of US army bases in South Korea. Sung Hwan Kim's video installation, Washing Brain and Corn, tells the complex narrative of a South Korean boy in 1968 who got murdered by North Korean spies after exposing his hatred towards communism.

The works of this exhibition disclose a conscious use of irony and a certain approach to organize this exhibition of contemporary art from Korea in Serbia. We do not aim to present a self-exoticised cultural product but aim to provide opportunities to critically re-consider questions and doubts of modernity in Korea. Accordingly, this exhibition attempts to shed light on displacement and alienation. It pursues the process of modernity and contemporaneity under different regional conditions in the global era.

Exhibition MOUTH TO MOUTH TO MOUTH: contemporary art from Korea was realized with the support of the Arts Council Korea.