NOTE FOR AHN(安), GALLERY 175, SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA, 2019
Exhibition Note for AHN (安) was a two-person exhibition I organized with Ahn Jaeyoung, which began from the question of whether an individual could escape from being possessed — one of the mysterious symptoms containing elements of superstition from Korea. The exhibition, tracks how images attained from one’s superstitious beliefs relate to mythical and religious images, then recombines and deconstructs them. Under our collaboration lies the hope to contact invisible but clearly existing sensual phenomena, and to together overcome anxieties, interpreting phenomena as the destiny of artist/mediator.
Paying attention to the number of tattoos on Ahn Jaeyoung‘s body (the Chinese character 安, a blue diamond, an arrow, a red-haired Anne, Piglet, Mickey Mouse, and an epitaph of Nikos Kazantzakis), I interpreted each image as a charm to ward off Ahn’s anxieties. I then, researched mythical and religious imagery in order to strengthen the shamanistic narrative. Observing that the number 12 frequently works as important motive in the myths of many different cultures, I set Ahn Jaeyoung‘s birthday, December 12, as a central axis and tried to discover the references to god-related signs from the number 12. Combining the symbolic world of the image, language, color, and numbers from ancient myths from twelve animals that guards tombs, I created a chart for a system of faith and proposed a psychological space for a praying man, just like the secret connotation of the ancient character, 安
NOTE FOR AHN(安), GALLERY 175, SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA, 2019
Exhibition Note for AHN (安) was a two-person exhibition I organized with Ahn Jaeyoung, which began from the question of whether an individual could escape from being possessed — one of the mysterious symptoms containing elements of superstition from Korea. The exhibition, tracks how images attained from one’s superstitious beliefs relate to mythical and religious images, then recombines and deconstructs them. Under our collaboration lies the hope to contact invisible but clearly existing sensual phenomena, and to together overcome anxieties, interpreting phenomena as the destiny of artist/mediator.
Paying attention to the number of tattoos on Ahn Jaeyoung‘s body (the Chinese character 安, a blue diamond, an arrow, a red-haired Anne, Piglet, Mickey Mouse, and an epitaph of Nikos Kazantzakis), I interpreted each image as a charm to ward off Ahn’s anxieties. I then, researched mythical and religious imagery in order to strengthen the shamanistic narrative. Observing that the number 12 frequently works as important motive in the myths of many different cultures, I set Ahn Jaeyoung‘s birthday, December 12, as a central axis and tried to discover the references to god-related signs from the number 12. Combining the symbolic world of the image, language, color, and numbers from ancient myths from twelve animals that guards tombs, I created a chart for a system of faith and proposed a psychological space for a praying man, just like the secret connotation of the ancient character, 安
The rapt of Proserpina,Joseph-Marie Vien, 1767, Musée de Grenoble
Installation view at 698-9 Seonosong-dong, Jeonju
( February 21 - March 06, 2020), as part of Print/Out,
Photo by Minkyoung Choi
Installation view of Jan van eyck academie openstudios 2021 Still cut, The geometry of the hunter, Single channel video, 2021
photo. Jang Geun bom
Mask Rental Service 2017
696 Seonosong-dong, Wansan-gu, Jeonju, KR
As a young woman walking through Seonmichon in broad daylight, I was often mistaken for someone working in the sex trade. Strangers I had never met would approach me and ask whether there was a room available even during the day. I had previously lived for two years near Place de Clichy in Paris, where, in the evenings, East Asian women involved in the sex trade solicited customers in front of the metro station. For this reason, I was also sometimes mistaken for a sex worker there. Being approached in public and asked for a price could feel threatening. Mask Rental Service began with these experiences of mistaken identity.
How might a group of schoolboys in uniforms, peering down the street with sideways glances of curiosity, relate to men who stare directly at their targets and push open glass doors, and to animal masks? Likewise, what relationship might people wearing animal masks and wandering the streets in broad daylight have with Seonmichon?
During the project, I remained on site as a host, lending animal masks to visitors and asking each person to take a selfie and bring it back. The photographs were printed as postcards and exhibited, proposing a psychological experience between the act of looking, the relationship with its object, and the act of exhibiting it, mediated by the masks.
During the ten-day project, two men mistook me for someone working in the sex trade and asked whether I could open the room behind the rental space. They also invited me to play with them while wearing masks and attempted physical contact. One of them was a foreigner who spoke no Korean, and I had to repeat several times: “I am not a prostitute.”
