DMA - DAEJEON MUSEUM OF ART

The Creation Center is located in the center of the old town of Daejeon (Eunhaeng-dong and Daeheung-dong) that harbors the city's long history. Taking advantage of its geopolitical location, in 2020 it has carried forward a series of exhibitions that look into Daejeon's urban culture with the theme, the three needs of human life (food, clothing and shelter). In the first half of the year it held the first exhibition of the series, Urban Renewal Project (Shelter): Between Collection and Memory, taking shelter as its motif. The exhibition brought back memories of Daejeon that history books do not deal with but that are retained in items collected at cultural shelters. And the center later held its second exhibition, Let's Hygge, taking food as its motif. After the Daejeon Railway Station was constructed in Daejeon, wheat flour came to be abundant in the city, and this led to open a number of kalgooksu (knife-cut noodles) restaurants and bakeries. In this circumstance, Let’s Hygge presented works of art depicting Daejeon’s unique foods, kalgooksu and breads. And now the third exhibition, Art for Everyone, Art with Everyone : Sociology of Art in Wardrobes, is presenting works, taking clothing as its motif. This exhibition accesses the sensitivity and specificity of Daejeon’s own through the works of art from the perspective of the humanities.

Clothing is a mirror of society. The act of dressing and grooming every day is the most important part of apprehending the collective intelligence of the times. And the fabrics and patterns of clothes change according to temperature and environment, and this phenomenon is linked with cultural tradition and clothing. If you examine repeated patterns of clothes, you can guess where and how their wearers have lived and worked. In this way, clothes contain the cultures and values of the times, beyond simply completing their wearers in semblance.
If you access the psychology and behavior of humans from a perspective of art, crossing the history and culture of the times, and examine social meaning of clothing in relation with human life, you will find that fashion itself is self-expression and is closely connected with society.

KIM Heera daily life itself is art. She tries reading of the world that penetrates society and reality through the medium of thread, as if she cures weak points of all unstable borders, beyond social powers that women cannot help but accept, and the social hierarchy that controls women and their clothes. On the other hand, Kim’s needlework that transplants life to ordinary s breaks out fixed ideas of traditional handicrafts and makes us find the point where it crosses all the borders of modern art.
Lee Inhee sees the world within her boundary through the medium of s. She washes and dries fish scales that no longer have traces of life with her own hands – things that are discarded from the world – and transplants them onto old clothes or shoes in a pattern of fish scales. This series of processes is related with her memory. She channels pieces of her experience that are complicatedly ded in her mind into ‘a sealed memory’ and ‘a well-kept daily life,’ and, enduring all her emotions, she sets off on a journey that delves into the world.
KIM Yongbeom specialized in fashion design at university and is now working as a designer who designs women’s shoes, including high-heeled shoes. In this exhibition he displays photographs of empty interiors of shoe factories in Seoul that contain joys and sorrows of shoemakers. He also took photographs of chairs that shoemakers made for themselves to relieve their fatigue of a long day on. Paying attention to the sweats of laborers who are left behind the desires of showy fashion, he creates works of art that disclose the dark side of society.