ARTIST INFO
LEE Chang-woon, One Way Trip, 2019, mixed media, variable
The reasons for migration are not limited to direct pressures like rising sea levels, outbreaks of war, or trouble with neighbours. We also move to other places in pursuit of dreams and desires. Lee Chang-woon renders the process of “movement” in a series of large-scale rail structure installations. One Way Trip, an installation series begun in 2011, shows sequentially ascending and descending eggs (and later, ping-pong balls) on rail structure worked by a conveyor belt with an attached engine. Previously, the series focused on the impoverished environments of poultry farms in Korea, which has the highest level of chicken consumption in the world. However, in recent works, this concern has been expanded in broader social systems; eggs, the subject of the series, have been replaced with ping-pong balls, a more generalized subject. The series symbolically represents a society whose members either follow its unilaterally-determined system or are left behind.
NAM Hwa-yeon, The Botany of Desire, 2015, two-channel video, colour, sound, 8’ 23’’ (The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Collection)
Nam Hwa-yeon’s The Botany of Desire introduces audiences to the tulip mania that swept through the Netherlands in the 17th century using photographs of tulips presented in a book of flora from that time along with a performance mimicking the behaviour of bees. The piece is the result of extensive historical research. It is reported that, during the tulip craze, the price of a single bulb of Semper Augustus, a tulip with scarlet stripes, rose to that of a luxurious house. For Nam, this raises the question of where, or in whom, the agency involved in such movements resides. In Nam’s work, the extremity of this human desire for beauty, as reflected in the tulip mania, overlaps with the Wall Street stock market crash of 2010. The juxtaposition of these two events shows desire pushing its boundaries. It contemplates the history of human desire as that of a living force that crosses borders and oceans.
NA Hyun, Cherry Babel Tower, 2019, mixed media, 120x120x140cm & Nanjido, 2015, mixed media on archival pigment, 108x77cm
Today, in a world witnessing vast waves of migrations and conflicts over countries’ borders, scientists often point out that Europe and other continents were originally settled by migrants, and still are. This is to say that, for the great majority of people, the concept of indigenousness no longer applies: we are all migrants. Using historical texts, photography, and installation, Na Hyun builds narratives that oppose claims of ethnic and blood purity. His Babel project represents both Korea and Germany, countries obsessed with their own ethnicity-society and racial purity, through images of Nanjido in Seoul and Mt. Teufelsberg in Berlin, projecting them onto a structure representing the Tower of Babel, the Biblical story of human linguistic divergence, suggesting the inseparability of the tower and the racial diversity of today. In preparing the work, he collected Reichstag’s records, ancient maps, old photographs and many other s for historical context. Cherry Babel Tower (2013), a compact version of his Babel series, is a small cabinet made from cherry wood containing a selection of ary materials. This exhibition also includes Nanjido, which comprises pieces of drawings depicting various naturalized plants collected by the artist.
Mixrice, Plants that Evolve (in one way or another), 2013, two-channel video, pigment print, 10’23’’, 14’15’’ (The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Collection)
The history of migration and movement is not limited to humanity. Plants have also migrated as the climate has changed. In the process, they have evolved, taking on the peculiar traits they have today. s, which may appear immobile, thus have their own history of migration. Yang Jieun and Yang Cheol-mo, under the name Mixrice, have examined specific conditions that cause migration in relation to current sociological phenomena. Their project Plants that Evolve (in one way or another) is made up of seven episodes of plant migration. The episodes feature exotic gardens on the roofs of immigrant homes, the transplanting process of a thousand-year-old tree, the landscapes of submerged sites, forest keeper, and the course of plant migration in response to urbanization. As plants relocate to other environments, the value of plants as totems for certain communities vanishes. In this way, Mixrice comments on the predicament of social values that cannot be monetized.