2023

Curatorial Direction for the Korea Artist Prize 2023 Exhibition

Sooyoun Lee (Curator / National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea)

The most significant feature of the newly reorganized Korea Artist Prize 2023 exhibition is the presentation of new works as well as previous works by the four nominee artists (Byungjun Kwon, Gala Porras-Kim, Kang Seung Lee, and Sojung Jun). Each artist will showcase their new art world through new works, while also exhibiting previous major works that contain the artist’s long-standing concerns and thematic consciousness. In this way, the exhibition is organized to explore the artists’ journeys leading up to their new works and to provide an understanding of their complex and multi-layered artistic worlds. In particular, the 2023 nominees have all pursued the theme of posthumanism in one way or another, examining the relationships between nature and humans as well as between humans and other humans, with both of these relationships having changed due to the development of science and technology and our entry into a post-industrial society. At the same time, the artists ask and answer questions in different ways, creating a veritable multiverse of coexisting parallel universes.

The works by Byungjun Kwon, Gala Porras-Kim, Kang Seung Lee, and Sojung Jun ask questions about the contextual criteria that allow human civilization and history to be established in the present moment, such as what underlies the distinction between humans and non-humans, a neighbor and the Other, and humans and nature? Is it even possible to make such distinctions? Where is the justification for rational modern institutions and systems that allow us to function as human beings in the modern world? Can our history, which has been accumulated amid exclusion, distinction, and disciplinary institutions and systems, really tell us the truth about ourselves as a species? These questions go beyond art to lead us to rethink any understanding we may have of ourselves as human beings at a fundamental level, and the direction that our civilization and history have been taking. The artists examine perceptions, institutions, customs, and taboos that are taken for granted from the current perspective and try to reveal their contradictions and weaknesses, or propose new alternatives. As the questions they ask and the alternatives they propose vary, so do the layers of thought the exhibition opens up. Extending beyond the realm of art to questions about the history of civilization, the relationship between humans and nature, the roots and workings of institutions, and the identity and possibilities of a community, the art worlds of these four exceptional artists symbolically show the philosophical and practical challenges that contemporary art continues to face.

Gala Porras-Kim and Sojung Jun ask universal, macro-level questions from an observer’s perspective, almost as if they were aliens studying anthropology (humanics). Their questions are not focused on a specific region, nationality, race, political history, or social history, but instead encompass a critical mindset that shakes the foundation of today’s notion of universality, which seems to define humanity and civilization.

Gala Porras-Kim’s work begins with artifacts that have left their mark on history, with the artist keenly interested in all past civilizations, including religious beliefs and death. As ancient objects created to revere life and death such as sarcophagi and dolmens lose their original function in the modern system of museums, galleries, and cultural heritage—and are now classified as works of art or national treasures, kept in storage, and displayed in exhibition halls—Porras-Kim strives to reconcile the will of ancient peoples who created and worshipped these objects with modern systems. To this end, she actively communicates with institutions such as museums and research institutes, seeks out relevant regulations and laws related to these objects, and explores academic sources such as archaeology and history, as well as religious beliefs and folk traditions, to help modern (rational) systems borrow from pre-modern (ritual) systems of the past. Furthermore, Gala Porras-Kim observes and conveys how things that were originally part of nature, such as the dolmens—which are now on UNESCO’s World Heritage List—and water vapor in the air of museums, became part of religious beliefs and cultural institutions, a part of everyday life, and then stood the test of time, standing ambiguously in the middle of natural and manmade classifications. Historical structures that may appear to be eternal and robust, as well as powerful institutions and laws, corrode over geological time. What is more is that it is not easy to understand and approach the historical past and changes in nature. Nevertheless, based on archaeological imagination, a universal understanding of human beings, and pantheistic beliefs, Porras-Kim judges the laws and institutions that form the basis of modern civilization, the classification system of academic disciplines, and the role of art in a cosmic space-time in new ways.

Sojung Jun is an artist who constantly explores the outer realm of modernity, which the contemporary era has constantly stepped on, as the realm has been abandoned by modernity in the process of modernization. Modernity is a space-time dominated by national identity, rationality, efficiency, speed, and the globalization of capital. Although Jun’s work presents modern space-time, such as European cities that began to develop in the fifteenth century, as well as Tokyo and Gyeongseong (Seoul) in the early twentieth century, the characters and their stories are not entirely part of the space-time of modernization, but rather things on the border crossing it. They sometimes appear in the form of a madman, fugitive, wanderer, or the weak, and question whether the modern human condition is really the final destination for human beings. On the other hand, modernity is also a shining golden achievement built by visual senses that are dominated by letters and numbers. Therefore, the senses of touch, hearing, and smell, which have been lost in the process of reading, writing, and calculating, emerge in Sojung Jun’s work as alternative tools of communication and understanding. These senses have always been a part of human beings, but they are remnants that have faded in the process of modernization. Following the process of the artist’s work, we can observe that not only visual data but also textures of sound, tremors and vibrations, and memories of smell build a temporary passage that connects human beings with the narratives of history. To do this, the artist calls upon poets, artists, dancers, and musicians from history to reflect on the modern times they have encountered using their whole bodies.

The method used by both Gala Porras-Kim and Sojung Jun is reminiscent of Star Trek’s Prime Directive, in that they observe changes in human culture and civilization on a long-term basis. Before making first contact with a civilization that does not have the warp drive technology to go beyond the speed of light, it is their responsibility to cautiously approach and orbit the planet, gaining a bird’s-eye-view of the entire civilization’s light and shade.

Kang Seung Lee and Byungjun Kwon more actively deal with the subjects of human history and civilization, exploring histories that have been exiled or forgotten by society, seeking alternative perspectives at the micro level, and looking for practical ways to carry all of this out in a bold way. By exploring and connecting the intersections of humans and non-humans, neighbors and strangers, refugees and settlers, normal and abnormal—all of which are visibly and invisibly divided within communities—their work seeks to generate knowledge as well as factual and experiential perceptions that have never existed before. The artists’ methodologies may be different, but they have something in common: they touch on the simple and essential.

For Kang Seung Lee, “caring” is the foundation upon which history can be reorganized, as it allows people to better and more clearly understand each other. For him, “caring” does not mean merely helping or doing people favors. It presupposes a deep understanding and connection between the caregiver and the care recipient. Lee’s “act of caring” serves as a cradle for excavating invisible materials and objects, connecting them across time periods and borders, as well as race and gender, and creating new stories. In the case of Kang Seung Lee specifically, the queer history archives in his work are collected from different people in the community who cared for each other, something the artist painstakingly—and for a great length of time—transformed into artworks and part of art history based on precious archival materials. Queer artists and activists who were active in different times and spaces can only come face to face with each other and start writing new histories through archives that have become artworks. On the other hand, the objects and fragments they left behind through the allegory of objects remind us of the disappearance of the present, standing firm like the Flemish still life paintings that symbolized memento mori (remember you must die). Thus, in Kang Seung Lee’s work, language and objects remain, but the human bodies that wore, touched, and used language and these objects leave only vague traces behind. Even in the place where the human body and the norms of the society that particular body belonged disappears, “caring” will survive and pass on those stories to future generations from that particular community.

Byungjun Kwon is an artist who has been experimenting with the possibility of human solidarity and expansion in communities through sound works and performance directing. His work, which is most often encountered as performances and sound experiences rather than exhibitions, has evolved into a comprehensive manifestation of the theater with the advent of robots. Using the medium of sound, the artist has been thinking a lot about how the experience of listening to sound can help us understand others and create solidarity between strangers. When the unfamiliar songs of migrants, the scents of landscapes, and the changes of bygone eras are captured by sound hardware and presented in an exhibition, a community of empathy and solidarity is created among those who share this auditory experience, at least for a short moment in time. Furthermore, the artist partners with robots—symbols of the non-human that resemble humans—to test the ultimate limits of human communities, like whether a transparent, beautiful but fleeting community such as this soap bubble can extend beyond the distinction between neighbors and strangers, to the boundary between humans and non-humans. The robots in his play are designed to stand, sit, meditate, act politely, reach out to people, and spend time with them, which is a far cry from industrial robots, which are designed to be nothing more than useful and efficient. The emergence of robots that are allowed to be useless is a bitter reminder of the human workers whose labor has been devalued by the rise of robots. Gazing at their uncanny resemblance to us, the viewer will realize that robots, as competitors, collaborators, or replacements, have already formed a community of failed solidarity with human workers who are already becoming strangers in society. As the artist quotes from a conversation with Krzysztof Wodiczko, “We are all strangers” and only as strangers can we be together.

Kang Seung Lee’s production of new knowledge through narrative excavation and Byungjun Kwon’s infinite expansion of human communities using robots create multiple complex forks in the turbulent stream of human society that marches straight ahead without looking back. The new streams they dig up are stories of a new world that has yet to arrive, and a more active hope for future possibilities.