00:00:09
Hi there, Joanna here. Thank you for joining us for
00:00:12
another exhibitionist this episode dedicated to Leap Year,
00:00:17
a survey of the South Korean artist Hague Young at the
00:00:21
Haywood Gallery. Emily and I recorded this
00:00:24
episode for the 1st and probably the last time during the week,
00:00:28
in the late afternoon rather than in the early hours of a
00:00:32
Sunday. And there is a certain chaotic
00:00:35
energy to it. As Emily and I are morning
00:00:38
people. I don't know if you'll notice
00:00:40
it, but it is the first episode where I lost it and laughed for
00:00:44
what felt like a very long time because it was me who breached
00:00:49
exhibition etiquette this time. And as Emily rightly pointed
00:00:53
out, I was the one who dedicated a whole episode last season to
00:00:57
this very subject. So now my usual reminder for you
00:01:02
to feel the holiday spirit and subscribe to our Patreon page
00:01:06
for less than a latte or a pint. Supporting us is also supporting
00:01:12
those who cannot pay but still want to enjoy the podcast
00:01:15
without ads. It makes a huge difference for
00:01:19
us because we're an independent podcast and like most of the
00:01:22
ones you listen to, which are part of media platforms, your
00:01:26
help allows us to grow and to produce even better episodes for
00:01:31
you. The link to the page is, as
00:01:33
always, in the show's notes. So go ahead and be Christmassy.
00:01:39
We're Hanaki. And now let's move on to the
00:01:43
episode. Hi everyone, welcome to
00:01:52
Exhibitionistas. This is the podcast where we go
00:01:55
to exhibition so that you have to.
00:01:58
My name is Emily Harding, I'm an art lover and an exhibition
00:02:01
goer. I'm so glad you could join us
00:02:03
for this episode about Haiku Yang.
00:02:06
She currently has a show called Leap Year taking place at the
00:02:10
Hayward Gallery in London until the 5th of January 2025.
00:02:14
So I am not going to bury the lead here and just say go see
00:02:19
it. And if you can't be in London to
00:02:22
see this show, check out her work any way that you can.
00:02:27
You will not regret it. I mean I was just so blown away.
00:02:31
I mean I can't say that this exhibition like changed my life,
00:02:36
but by the end I felt like I had traversed like my own interior
00:02:43
and that I travelled to South Korea so and and and been on
00:02:46
many travels with her quite frankly.
00:02:48
But I'm getting ahead of myself. I need to let my lovely Co host
00:02:53
introduce yourself. Well, hello, Hello, exhibition
00:02:57
Estas. I am Joanna Pionevis,
00:03:00
independent writer and curator, artistic Director of Drawing Now
00:03:04
Paris. And I'm so glad that you are
00:03:08
this enthusiastic, Emily, because last time I I almost
00:03:12
thought that we'd lost you. So welcome back.
00:03:15
Yeah, it's true. I am more enthusiastic about
00:03:18
this than I was our previous exhibition we visited.
00:03:21
I think we're going to lose a few friends with the previous
00:03:23
episode. That's OK.
00:03:26
So this is the first time we are covering an exhibition at the
00:03:30
Hayward Gallery, if you can believe it.
00:03:33
Yeah, I remember that almost a year ago I was so happy to visit
00:03:38
their show of Hiroshi Sukimoto's work, Japanese conceptual
00:03:42
photographer. And now we are going to South
00:03:45
Korea and Germany with the amazing Hague, Young but first,
00:03:50
as ever. What other cultural things have
00:03:53
you been delving into, Emily, this week?
00:03:56
How has your week been? Yeah, well, it hasn't been as
00:04:01
joyous as visiting at the Hagar Yang exhibition, I got to say,
00:04:05
given the US election results and doing lots of digesting and
00:04:10
and thinking about that and all of the developments that are
00:04:15
taking place. So we're recording this a couple
00:04:17
weeks after the election results were announced.
00:04:21
But so I've been doing a lot of thinking, along with loads of
00:04:24
other people, of course, about, you know, what this kind of
00:04:28
means. And it, it brought me back to
00:04:31
the work of Robert Putnam, who some people might have heard of
00:04:36
the work Bowling Alone. He is a Harvard professor and he
00:04:41
wrote a paper originally in the late 90s that looked at this
00:04:44
whole notion of social capital and the fact that the US was
00:04:48
losing it. President Clinton at the time
00:04:50
was a big fan of his, and he turned that paper into a book
00:04:54
called Bowling Alone, which is essentially what you imagine it
00:04:57
to be. It's like Americans are not
00:04:59
joining bowling leagues anymore. They're just doing it on their
00:05:02
own. And that goes for all sorts of
00:05:05
civic institutions, labor unions, etcetera, civic groups,
00:05:09
you know, obviously religious institutions that people were no
00:05:12
longer joining into, you know, living more atomized lives.
00:05:18
That book Bowling Alone is basically looking at the mid 60s
00:05:23
to the late 90s where social capital went down.
00:05:26
When I was working at US at the US Congress, this was like
00:05:31
required reading in the office that I, that I worked in.
00:05:35
It was like. You don't say, really.
00:05:37
Yeah, yeah. It's really fascinating.
00:05:39
I mean, if anybody in this is not a, this is not a politics or
00:05:43
a plug for politics. Yeah, for political books.
00:05:47
Exactly. Why not?
00:05:48
Why not? Yeah.
00:05:50
So he, his research is that now looking at how did we build all
00:05:55
that social capital in the 1st place.
00:05:57
So at the end of the 1800s in the US and lots of places, we
00:06:02
had the Gilded Age. So we had very, very rich people
00:06:06
and very, very poor people. And that is happening again now.
00:06:10
That huge gulf between what, you know, people like Elon Musk make
00:06:15
and, you know, regular folks has only exacerbated massively.
00:06:19
So he's saying, well, if we're in that same position, what can
00:06:22
we learn about how we got ourselves out of that Gilded Age
00:06:27
and, and is it possible to do it again?
00:06:29
So that's helping me feel a little bit more hopeful about
00:06:34
the world at least. And could Art perhaps bridge
00:06:40
that gap? You know what, it could.
00:06:42
I mean, honestly, it's like, I think the notion of going and
00:06:47
seeing exhibitions together, seeing art together, talking
00:06:51
about it together. I mean, obviously podcasts are
00:06:54
part of that atomized culture, right?
00:06:57
I mean, people listen to them on their own usually, you know, on
00:07:02
a run or doing the dishes or what have you.
00:07:04
But art in and of itself, in the institution of absolutely can
00:07:10
play a part in bringing people together.
00:07:13
Listen, he is wishing that art will still play a part in
00:07:18
American Society from January on.
00:07:21
And Speaking of bridging the gap, so this is the week where
00:07:28
Maurizio Catalan's banana was sold for about 6 million or 6
00:07:36
and a half, $1 so. Newspaper had something on that,
00:07:40
didn't they? So our our colleague Ben Luke
00:07:45
just posted on this Instagram an article he wrote five years ago,
00:07:49
I think, or a few years ago about the the the famous banana.
00:07:54
So to explain, the piece in itself is a banana, a real
00:08:00
banana, taped onto the wall with Scotch tape, but not Scotch tape
00:08:04
with duct tape. And it's called comedian.
00:08:08
It's a fun pun, obviously, because I had forgotten the
00:08:12
title and because it kind of came back, I was thinking, huh,
00:08:18
that's not about title. Actually, it's kind of almost
00:08:20
elevates such a silly joke, basically.
00:08:25
And so the person who bought this work is a Chinese crypto
00:08:30
bro, as Ben Luke puts it. I may be misquoting him, but I
00:08:34
remember the word bro. And he, he's very happy to, to
00:08:41
buy it. He's going to eat the banana
00:08:42
soon as he he installs it or gets it really.
00:08:46
Because obviously what you get when you buy this is a
00:08:50
certificate. And we talked about this in the
00:08:53
last episode. So any, any work that has
00:08:57
ephemeral elements into it, obviously it's you have to
00:09:02
remake it all the time. There's a piece by Giovanni
00:09:06
Anselmo, if I'm not mistaken, in the Pompidou collection that is
00:09:12
a sort of like a funereal plinth almost in marble with a lettuce
00:09:17
on top of it. So obviously the lettuce needs
00:09:20
to be replaced all the time. It's not such a wild thing, you
00:09:25
know, in the out worlds and as far as materials go, it has been
00:09:30
done and redone. It's not something new.
00:09:33
But the fact that it is just a banana and it's duct tape and
00:09:39
it's such a speculative operation by this point, you
00:09:45
know, this this comedian piece brings the art world again into
00:09:52
the general press, which is not great because that's the point
00:09:56
where whatever you think of Mauricio Catalan, that's where
00:10:02
we lose people because that's what people take from
00:10:08
contemporary art, you know? So I was reading in this blog,
00:10:11
this kind of feminist gossip blog, the banana.
00:10:15
Go to it. You know, it has nothing about
00:10:17
feminism, nothing about anything.
00:10:19
It has no relation whatsoever to the premise of the website and
00:10:24
the person was writing. And believe it or not, what you
00:10:29
buy when you buy the banana is a piece of paper and a
00:10:34
certificate. And it's, you know, for for us
00:10:38
in the out world is so normal. It's such a normal thing almost
00:10:44
not for everyone, but maybe in the contemporary art world.
00:10:47
And so I think that's the point where things are not, you know,
00:10:50
they're not breached. That's where we lose a lot of
00:10:54
people. And then they can sort of cast
00:10:57
it as silly and extreme. And, you know, I mean, people
00:11:02
are spending all of this money and on that.
00:11:05
And yeah, exactly. I mean, I feel like this show
00:11:08
that we're going to talk about, though, is the embodiment of
00:11:12
like what contemporary art can do and really relate to people
00:11:17
because I felt like I related to it so.
00:11:20
Yes, I'm so curious to hear about that, Emily, because, you
00:11:24
know, I've been looking at the reviews of the show.
00:11:27
Time out The Guardian. Really bad reviews.
00:11:30
Really. Yeah, 2.
00:11:32
Stars, one star. Yeah, I'm.
00:11:35
I'm quite surprised and I can't put my finger on it.
00:11:39
Wow, that's so interesting because I mean, you know, my
00:11:41
husband Peter, he, you know, enjoys art and but he's
00:11:45
definitely not going with me to every single one.
00:11:47
But this was one that even before I said we were going to
00:11:50
go talk about this, he was like, I want to go to that one.
00:11:54
You know, he just, he was really drawn to it.
00:11:57
Do you want to talk? You know, just contextualize the
00:12:01
artist a little bit. Hagley Young for our listeners.
00:12:05
Sure, sure. So I'll preface this by saying
00:12:08
there isn't a ton out there sort of about her upbringing and
00:12:12
other than the bits you find and the the the catalogue and other
00:12:17
gallery profiles etcetera. But there's lots of interviews
00:12:21
with her and they are well worth it where she sort of talks about
00:12:24
her work quite exclusively. But what we do know, I mean, so
00:12:28
she was born in Seoul, South Korea, in 1971.
00:12:31
She grew up with parents that were both writers and labor
00:12:35
activists. Korea at the time was ruled by a
00:12:39
military dictator, Park Chung Ki, that took power in 1961, so
00:12:45
10 years before she was born and was assassinated in 1979.
00:12:50
Her father was dismissed from his job as a journalist along
00:12:54
with hundreds of others for protesting censorship under the
00:12:59
dictator. And he ended up in construction.
00:13:01
And one of the he, he ended up working in North Africa.
00:13:05
I think it was Libya and maybe Tunisia, but he ended up working
00:13:12
in North Africa, which a lot of folks from Asian backgrounds did
00:13:17
at the time, mostly in the Gulf. The Gulf was certainly, you
00:13:21
know, kind of going through a big boom time.
00:13:23
And I mean, there were millions of of South Koreans in
00:13:27
particular, but folks from across Southeast Asia that were
00:13:32
there working on construction sites, etcetera, during that
00:13:36
whole construction boom kind of in the 90s, I guess So.
00:13:42
But these themes of her parents, yeah, of political movement, you
00:13:48
know, through their union work, etcetera and displacement are
00:13:54
alive and well in her work and really, really palpable.
00:13:57
She produced a Commission that honored Korean migrants to the
00:14:02
Gulf in 2015 that was called Opaque Wind, and it had sort of
00:14:06
an external installation and an internal installation.
00:14:10
So this means that if you're saying the 90s, so that means
00:14:14
that she grew up in North Africa because she was born in 1971.
00:14:20
They didn't live there. He went to work there.
00:14:24
Oh, so he left and so and her mom and her stayed behind in
00:14:29
Korea. That's my I mean, that was the
00:14:32
general thing that happened because often with those
00:14:37
arrangements, they don't allow your family to come with you.
00:14:39
You were there to work and that's it.
00:14:42
Your. Visa.
00:14:42
That's brutal. OK.
00:14:45
Really brutal. I mean, you know, indentured
00:14:48
servitude is a way to describe it, which is a way to describe
00:14:52
slavery. And I don't know what particular
00:14:54
conditions her father was under, but I mean, you go to Dubai and
00:15:01
all of these kind of, you know, Kuwait or wherever.
00:15:03
And that is the pretty appalling situation that a lot of these
00:15:08
folks are in. When I was working in Iraq,
00:15:11
there were a lot of people who were working within the Green
00:15:13
Zone that had pretty appalling conditions.
00:15:16
I mean, but yeah, so I I doubt that their their families would
00:15:20
have been able to join them. Wow, that is brutal.
00:15:24
OK. Yeah.
00:15:25
That's that's a wild experience. OK, they stayed and the dads
00:15:31
left, which may have triggered her imagination of whatever is
00:15:36
beyond and what it is to work outside because she ended up in
00:15:40
Germany, right? Yeah, totally.
00:15:42
Yeah. So she she got her BFA from
00:15:45
Seoul National University and graduated with her master's from
00:15:50
Stratoschuler. I think is how it's pronounced
00:15:53
in Germany. Of course, absolutely perfect
00:15:55
German Emily. Honestly, Low notes.
00:15:58
I went in with confidence, so. Yeah, exactly.
00:16:02
So she's a professor at that university now.
00:16:05
And so is it strange to you, knowing the art world, an artist
00:16:09
much better that she is a, is a university professor?
00:16:15
I mean, is that a? Is that a common thing?
00:16:17
Oh yes. Yes, of.
00:16:19
Course, the bazaar even in Paris, so the Fine Arts school,
00:16:23
like the very famous Fine Arts Fine Arts school in Paris,
00:16:27
they're even teachers or the these professors, they have
00:16:31
studios. So you're studying under the
00:16:35
Annette Massages studio, for example, or in the Annette
00:16:38
Massages studio. And Annette Massages is a huge
00:16:40
artist. So there is this kind of
00:16:43
tradition, I guess. It seems like a sort of, now
00:16:46
that I'm thinking about it, it's almost feels like a remnant from
00:16:50
the olden days when you had the Master and the disciple and you
00:16:55
had Michelangelo, and then you had all the other ones who also
00:16:58
kind of contributed to whatever frescoes they were doing, but it
00:17:01
was Michelangelo's. So of course there's a bit of
00:17:04
that, but then you're starting to yourself, become an artist
00:17:07
and leave the school and then have your own autonomous career,
00:17:11
obviously. But it's not that.
00:17:14
It's not that unusual. In fact, it's very, very normal
00:17:17
that at a certain point artists are rather invited to, to teach
00:17:23
or they want to teach themselves to preserve a certain freedom to
00:17:28
have a steady income. And what, what best thing to do
00:17:31
than to remain in the school and, and kind of be within that
00:17:35
system in a way, you know? Yeah, 'cause I mean, you know,
00:17:40
Philip Guston, obviously when we talked about him, he was he was
00:17:44
teaching as well. And, you know, you think of like
00:17:48
the Bauhaus school. It's like all of the incredible,
00:17:51
you know, artists that were there that were teaching at the
00:17:53
time. But I guess, you know, that I,
00:17:56
I, I sort of categorize that as something historical that
00:18:00
artists did because I'm, I'm in the Hayward Gallery and I'm
00:18:04
looking at the immense body of work and this huge solo show.
00:18:10
And there's part of me that thinks, well, she must be doing
00:18:13
pretty well. I mean, like, like, like, I
00:18:16
mean, there's, you know, there's no way she would need to have a
00:18:21
steady income outside of what she is doing.
00:18:25
But do you, I mean, do you think that and and maybe she loves
00:18:28
teaching, you know, maybe she loves it and that's a different
00:18:31
thing, you know, but it's like, if it's the argument of of a
00:18:35
steady income, is it conceivable that somebody could be of her
00:18:40
stature and still in the art world not have like steady
00:18:44
enough or enough income to survive?
00:18:46
Is that would you say that's true?
00:18:49
That's a very, very good question actually.
00:18:52
And I don't think people realize how precarious sometimes being
00:18:56
an artist is somehow, because in her case, I don't know much
00:19:02
about her gallery exhibitions. She is represented by a very
00:19:05
good gallery, Chantelle Couzelle in Paris.
00:19:09
And this is an international gallery of great status.
00:19:12
But I've never seen an exhibition there, you know, like
00:19:15
these small commercial, let's say, exhibitions that artists
00:19:19
produce for galleries. But looking at her work, think
00:19:25
about it, Emily, even if you live in a palace, how much of
00:19:31
those works could you, I mean, how much could she sell?
00:19:36
You know, in terms of dimension, in terms of there's a thing, a
00:19:41
phenomenon, which is that there's, there's institutional
00:19:45
artists. So artists who really are
00:19:48
interested in producing these incredibly poetic, risque,
00:19:55
almost experimental kinds of works that are not fit.
00:20:00
For other places than big collections such as Pinot that
00:20:05
we talked about in regards to My Kelly, or big institutional
00:20:10
collections such as the Tate, for example, the Tate has a huge
00:20:15
collection. So there's this phenomenon of
00:20:18
artists. Of course, you are very well
00:20:20
paid to do an exhibition like this.
00:20:22
Or you should. She moves around the world and
00:20:27
she does another thing, which is another phenomenon for artists.
00:20:30
It's another source of income which is doing residencies.
00:20:35
So there is this. If you're not attacked, if you
00:20:39
don't have children and, or if your children are older or if
00:20:45
you don't have yet children, there's another way for you to
00:20:48
create and to find ways to produce and to exist, which is
00:20:54
doing residencies. And that's one of the things she
00:20:57
did. And that's one of the things
00:20:58
that actually created one of the works in the exhibition called
00:21:02
Storage Piece. She was moving about and at a
00:21:05
certain point she didn't even have a place to live, let alone
00:21:08
a place to store her work. And therefore she had a huge
00:21:12
problem in her hands because she had a burgeoning career, not a
00:21:17
lot of money, but a lot of invitations to be part of
00:21:20
exhibitions across Europe. So she produced a lot of work.
00:21:24
And when it came back to her, where does she put it?
00:21:27
So, you know, that's and I think you're asking yourself these
00:21:30
questions because this exhibition is so clever that it
00:21:34
talks about how she incorporates what it is to be a creative
00:21:40
person in the world with objects, right?
00:21:44
I mean, we're going to talk about it, but I think that
00:21:46
planted these questions in your mind.
00:21:49
And I, I applaud her for that. That's incredible.
00:21:52
And I applaud you as well because not everyone thinks
00:21:55
about these things. I have been so professional.
00:21:58
What is wrong with me? Sorry, Why am I applauding you?
00:22:03
Help. But she she was pretty
00:22:07
successful from the jump. I mean, she graduated in 1999
00:22:10
and had a first solo exhibition in 2000 in Barbara Vines Gallery
00:22:16
in Berlin. So I mean, and I can imagine
00:22:20
that was a Kraken show. Like I, I tried to find some
00:22:23
stuff on it. I couldn't.
00:22:25
But I. I love your passion.
00:22:28
Yeah, yeah. I mean, she, yeah, she's really
00:22:31
got to me this one. But I mean, and I also, I'll
00:22:35
just say. So she primarily works in
00:22:37
sculpture, prints, collage, installation.
00:22:42
You know, it's kind of an overview and they include ideas
00:22:46
of myths and legends that she grew up with every day growing
00:22:51
up and then articles like very domestic articles as well.
00:22:55
So drying racks, light bulbs, radiators, other appliances.
00:22:59
Venetian blinds are a big one, which I thought she used to
00:23:04
chef's kiss. Beautiful execution there.
00:23:09
But and, and, and her, her works are really sensory.
00:23:13
So movement is a big thing, and the sculptures and installations
00:23:17
move, but there's a light and sound involved where you just
00:23:22
feel like you're moving within it.
00:23:26
And movement is such a big thing for her.
00:23:28
You know, obviously we talked about political movements, the
00:23:32
movement of your person from, you know, being geographically
00:23:37
unbound. I mean, her father was she is.
00:23:40
That's a big part of about of her story, but also just like
00:23:46
physical movement. So the very, very tactile things
00:23:52
she has that that my hands wanted to touch so badly and
00:23:58
move, you know, I mean, she, she works with bells a lot and I
00:24:03
mean some. I was hoping there was a
00:24:04
security issue in this episode as well with you Emily.
00:24:10
I'm sure it might have happened with me.
00:24:13
I'll talk about it later. Teaser.
00:24:15
Teaser. Yeah, that's funny.
00:24:18
But yeah, so that's kind of the the broad, the broad picture of
00:24:23
of kind of how she works. And this exhibition in and of
00:24:26
itself is called, this is another sort of curator question
00:24:29
for you. It's called.
00:24:32
It is called a survey rather than a retrospective Is.
00:24:36
There a difference, yes. So that's a bit of a conundrum
00:24:40
because it's almost means the same thing.
00:24:43
I was going to say it sounds like a distinction without a
00:24:45
difference. But there is a difference based
00:24:49
upon age, which means that, and that's a funny thing with her
00:24:54
because in the beginning of her career she made two things, two
00:25:00
catalogue resumes when she'd only had like five years of
00:25:04
existence as probably including her student years.
00:25:07
And she says in an interview, I was quite aware of the fact that
00:25:11
a catalogue has only was everything you produced.
00:25:14
And I just found the idea really compelling to really look at
00:25:18
everything I had made. And you feel that she has that
00:25:21
kind of mind that she wants to really focus on everything she
00:25:27
produces because her dates, the dates of some of her works are
00:25:31
like 2000 and one, 2021 for example.
00:25:35
And she goes back to some series.
00:25:37
And so it's really interesting because the catalogue resume
00:25:41
would go with the retrospective exhibition or even a posthumous
00:25:45
exhibition. So a retrospective exhibition is
00:25:48
like, you will have had produced so much work, you're revered,
00:25:53
you probably have some lots of prizes, lots of accolades.
00:25:57
And now we're going to go through all your work and all
00:25:59
the phases of your work in your life.
00:26:02
And so certain artists, even when they are of a certain age,
00:26:06
say, I will not say who told me that.
00:26:08
They're like, no, no, no, I don't want to do a
00:26:10
retrospective. You know, like, come on, I'm not
00:26:13
old, you know? And some artists are really
00:26:16
happy to get to that point. Like, OK, I'm going to work on
00:26:19
the retrospective. A survey is more what she likes
00:26:23
to do. I think she really defines even
00:26:26
her process, which is to go over her production, go over what
00:26:30
she's done and organize it in a way by schemes chronologically,
00:26:35
you know, however you want to do it.
00:26:37
And it's kind of overlooking a body of work that doesn't have
00:26:41
to comprise the whole, each element of the of the whole
00:26:45
career, let's say. Right.
00:26:48
OK. And this is that's true for this
00:26:50
one. I mean this one is definitely
00:26:52
thematic and does not go chronologically.
00:26:55
And, you know, looking through some of her other work, there's
00:26:58
clearly a lot that was not included in this necessarily,
00:27:04
but cool. So do you want to like, bring us
00:27:08
into the exhibition? Sure.
00:27:10
I just want to add that she, so in terms of her life, she was
00:27:16
very European at a certain point.
00:27:19
So she moved to Germany, she studied in Germany, she did lots
00:27:23
of residencies all over around the world.
00:27:25
She spent some time in Paris and then she in 2015 she had a big
00:27:32
exhibition in Seoul and Liam Museum.
00:27:36
And so she spent some time in Korea and kind of went back to
00:27:42
Korea, bought a studio that rented a studio there.
00:27:46
And so we established herself from there on between South
00:27:51
Korea and Germany. So there was a process in her
00:27:55
life, as far as I understand, where she left.
00:27:59
She moved out. She became very European.
00:28:02
She deorientalized herself, as she puts it in in an interview
00:28:07
or her work absorbed a lot of things.
00:28:12
She's very curious. She's very interested in
00:28:15
practices across the world. She does lots of investigations
00:28:19
and then going back to South Korea brought back an interest
00:28:25
in certain practices and the politics of those practices that
00:28:30
we're going to talk about later because it does come up in the
00:28:33
exhibition. So I think that's an important
00:28:35
thing to say. So exhibition.
00:28:41
So the Hayworth Gallery is a brutalist building within the
00:28:50
South Bank. I forget South.
00:28:53
Bank, the South Bank kind of complex.
00:28:55
Complex a whole. Bunch there, yeah.
00:28:58
So it's a beautiful complex and a beautiful gallery by the River
00:29:04
Thames, Brutalist architecture, cement, Gray, but of a certain
00:29:11
period. So it's not a sort of
00:29:14
rectangular thing and just a huge gallery.
00:29:18
There's these kind of looks and these nooks and these spaces and
00:29:22
it's a really interesting building and it's interesting as
00:29:26
well because you open a door so you don't it's not like at the
00:29:30
tape where everything's open and you just go through an entrance
00:29:34
that has no door that opens or closes.
00:29:37
And so here and this is to tell you how she thinks of space as
00:29:41
well. It's really interesting what she
00:29:42
does. So when you're so you, The thing
00:29:46
is when you're going to see an exhibition, or maybe it's just
00:29:49
me because I'm an excited little Bunny, but you kind of like go
00:29:53
into the space and you don't think about it.
00:29:54
You just want to see when it be inside.
00:29:57
But she marks the thresholds. So there's someone at the door
00:30:01
who tells you as you are about to open the door.
00:30:05
Well, you can go in. So go in.
00:30:08
But there's an artwork that you can touch.
00:30:11
So it's not this one, it's that one.
00:30:15
And of course I go into a complete panic because if you
00:30:18
give me instructions, I'm super focused.
00:30:22
Hold on, let me write that down. What was that?
00:30:24
OK. Or, or I can touch something.
00:30:30
So I go like, I'm going to get this wrong, you know, and I this
00:30:33
kind of like feeling, you know, doom that I'm just this is not
00:30:38
going to work. So you go and as you went.
00:30:40
So not only do you have that experience, but as you went to,
00:30:43
there's a curtain of little ropes made by bells, by these
00:30:49
circular bells that Jingle. Jingle.
00:30:52
Yeah. Jingle Bells.
00:30:53
Yeah. Kind.
00:30:53
Of Jingle Bells that that produce that jingling sound as
00:30:57
you went to the exhibition. So you're not in the exhibition
00:31:00
and already it's quite the experience and you renounce your
00:31:05
arrival and you feel that you're passing a threshold of some
00:31:08
kind, and then there's a huge installation of.
00:31:13
Sorry, sorry, just to say that I did not get any warning.
00:31:18
No one told me anything when I went in joking.
00:31:21
Was I being pranked? I I went in, I opened the doors
00:31:26
and I saw that, you know, that the curtain of bells in front of
00:31:30
me and I just went to the side and walked around it like I was
00:31:35
like, oh, I'm not. Obviously I'm not supposed to.
00:31:39
Yeah, exactly. I know I've had this experience
00:31:42
before. I don't want to leave in
00:31:43
handcuffs, OK? I know this.
00:31:45
I've been scolded before. Someone went through my phone
00:31:48
and my pictures before. I'm not going to go through this
00:31:50
again. Exactly.
00:31:52
So. So I went around it and it
00:31:54
wasn't until and I just didn't even really consider it at all.
00:31:59
And it wasn't until I sort of got to the other side of the
00:32:01
room and then I saw I heard heard somebody else come in.
00:32:04
It was like Jingle, Jingle, Jingle.
00:32:06
And I was like, no way. I missed that.
00:32:10
So when I go back with Peter, I'm not going to tell him
00:32:12
anything and I want him to just walk ahead of me and.
00:32:17
So I'm really puzzled. Yeah, because I presumed that
00:32:24
so. So.
00:32:25
So you went to let me not get ahead of myself here.
00:32:28
So you enter and there's this beautiful installation with,
00:32:33
with drying racks, these white weird, almost anthropomorphic
00:32:38
shapes and these these cables that have these lamps, these lit
00:32:45
lamps at the end. So these electric cables that go
00:32:48
up to the ceiling, go into the drying racks, go up to the
00:32:52
ceiling again, then go into the drying racks.
00:32:55
There's white cables, black cables, and there's lights, you
00:33:00
know, light bulbs everywhere. And this is really beautiful
00:33:03
thing. And so I spent about 5 minutes
00:33:06
caressing the cables. Amazing.
00:33:10
I'm sorry, Heywood. Calvary, if you listen.
00:33:12
Amazing. I had no idea that they were
00:33:15
talking about the curtain. Because for me.
00:33:18
Wow, so you thought that was the bit you could touch was the
00:33:22
cables? I'm still not sure.
00:33:26
Do you think because listen, listen, can you reason with me
00:33:31
so you have a cut? So because now you're throwing
00:33:35
me off because you have a curtain.
00:33:39
How can you go through a curtain without touching it?
00:33:42
That's what. So so the there's a gap between
00:33:46
the curtain and the wall, and I walked in.
00:33:51
So. And I was just like, Oh well,
00:33:53
clearly I'm not touching. I'm not supposed to touch
00:33:56
anything I've been told before. That you were like hands on.
00:34:01
Yeah, yeah. Shimmy to the side.
00:34:04
Get out the gas. Like, went through the curtain,
00:34:08
touched all the cables, you know, like, Oh my.
00:34:17
Gosh, that's amazing. And nobody was there like
00:34:20
shaking a finger at you. One and I saw people looking.
00:34:26
Was it busy when you were there? Was it like?
00:34:30
I saw people looking at me like. She's like, girl, get a grip,
00:34:37
OK? Together with electrical cord,
00:34:40
Yeah. And also, this is an art
00:34:42
exhibition. What, people don't know how to
00:34:44
behave anymore. Yeah, I just felt these looks.
00:34:48
At a certain point, I was touching a cable.
00:34:50
I was like why am? I Oh my God, And this is the
00:34:55
woman who did an episode on exhibition etiquette.
00:35:01
There we have it. Oh my God, why?
00:35:05
Hilarious. That's how it did make me follow
00:35:09
the cables. It was a completely sensorial
00:35:12
experience because I just followed the cables up and then
00:35:14
was like, oh, so this one goes there, I'm going to touch that
00:35:18
one. And then there's some point I
00:35:19
was like, why? This doesn't add anything to the
00:35:23
experience, you know? Wow.
00:35:26
You were like, yeah, I'm into it, but I'm not really sure what
00:35:29
the Can you imagine if like 'cause those drying racks, these
00:35:34
are like the kind of drying racks you buy at IKEA or
00:35:37
whatever and there's like 1 stacked on top of another and
00:35:42
then those cords are kind of going through it so that the
00:35:44
lights can be in there. So my realization was I hear the
00:35:49
jingling sound and I turn around and I see a child playing with
00:35:53
the the Jingle Bells the the curtain and security looking at
00:35:58
the child. Like really.
00:36:00
And I just think, OK, so maybe they thought I worked at the
00:36:04
Hayward because not to bury the lead again later on, if there's
00:36:11
there's a sort of text on the wall telling you that you can
00:36:14
ask someone from the staff to activate sculptures for you.
00:36:18
So the sculptures are supposed to be that some of them are
00:36:21
supposed to be touched. And I think they probably
00:36:25
thought the security guard probably thought, oh, this
00:36:27
securator I didn't know and or this is a technician that's kind
00:36:31
of kind of checking if everything's fine or I just
00:36:35
know. That's.
00:36:36
Amazing. I shouldn't be saying this
00:36:39
recorded. Because you probably went up
00:36:42
there with like absolute confidence.
00:36:45
Like you pronounced Strader shula.
00:36:48
Yeah, exactly the same way. Same who?
00:36:50
Knows if it's right, but you know what?
00:36:52
I'm doing it. I'm touching this stuff.
00:36:54
But there's, there's also in the exhibition, one of the ones in
00:36:59
that room that you can activate or have the staff activate is
00:37:04
the, there's a giant Jingle Bell rope that kind of goes, it's,
00:37:10
it's pretty substantial. It goes all the way to the top,
00:37:13
really high ceiling kind of has a, you know, kind of a lagging
00:37:19
connecting bit. And then it goes down.
00:37:21
There's a shorter side that hangs down.
00:37:23
And so it's, it's a rope. It's to mimic a rope, which is a
00:37:27
bit of folklore about a couple of kids that were running from a
00:37:31
tiger and they asked. Brother and the sister.
00:37:34
Exactly. And they asked for a rope to
00:37:37
come down that they could climb to like save them.
00:37:40
And they climbed the rope. And when they got up to the
00:37:44
heavens or whatever, the girl became the sun and the boy
00:37:47
became the moon. And that's sort of the origin
00:37:49
story and Korean folklore of the sun and the moon.
00:37:54
But the, there's that sign there that says that you can activate
00:37:57
that. I didn't see the sign, but I saw
00:37:59
a guy go over there and like start spinning the rope.
00:38:03
And I, you know, again, it's like I've learned my lesson,
00:38:06
right? I have taken the message on
00:38:08
board to follow the rules at exhibitions.
00:38:12
And, and I was kind of looking at him and I was like, is there
00:38:15
a badge there? Is he official?
00:38:18
You know, so I was kind of looking at and he was, he was in
00:38:21
fact official. And then he very kindly.
00:38:24
One of the sculptures be activated because that's one of
00:38:26
the things so regularly people go there people from the Haywood
00:38:30
Gallery obviously and activate the sculpture.
00:38:33
So you very regularly have sound immediately.
00:38:37
Well that's that's that room is full of sound because people I
00:38:40
mean the Haywood gallery is always busy so there's always
00:38:42
people going in and then that rope is activated again.
00:38:46
So quite an eventful start to the exhibition basically.
00:38:52
And then you have two works that are quite interesting which, and
00:38:59
there are kind of works from the beginning, I think 2008 around
00:39:05
that time. So one of them is, and I keep
00:39:10
forgetting the name of that work.
00:39:11
So I'm going to see in the catalogue social conditions of
00:39:14
the Sitting Table, which is from 2001, and it's a photographic
00:39:18
piece and with a little text, so quite conceptual.
00:39:22
So really a work from the beginning where she had a more
00:39:27
social and political stance, let's say.
00:39:30
And they're photographs of sitting tables, which is
00:39:35
apparently a South Korean or maybe a whole a Korean
00:39:39
phenomenon of making these makeshift tables that are made
00:39:46
with found materials, I think. And they're supposed to be in
00:39:50
front of shops and they are used for everything, basically.
00:39:55
You can lean onto them. You can put things on them.
00:39:58
And I didn't understand the purpose of those tables.
00:40:01
I just understood that they are a dying tradition.
00:40:05
And she kind of wanted to document it because it's
00:40:11
disappearing and it's a very moving object.
00:40:15
Yeah. And I loved it though.
00:40:16
I mean, I love, I love the whole simple notion of let's just
00:40:20
create this table that people can kind of do what they need to
00:40:24
do. And I mean, going back to where
00:40:26
we opened up with this book I'm reading on social capital and
00:40:31
Robert Putnam's work, it's like, that's how that little things
00:40:36
like that help engineer community that is more
00:40:40
connected. And I I, yeah, I loved those.
00:40:44
Yeah, I love that piece as well because it is also a piece.
00:40:47
And that's why I say that I didn't quite understand the
00:40:50
purpose of it because it's one of those idiosyncrasies, right?
00:40:55
It's one of those those things that probably for Koreans are
00:40:59
like, sure, the sitting table obviously, and for us like, but
00:41:03
what is? But wait, so you put stuff on
00:41:06
it, but then you sit on it. Why is it called sitting table?
00:41:09
Because you don't. You use stables for sitting, you
00:41:12
know? Yeah, exactly.
00:41:14
And it also shows the difference in body behaviour.
00:41:21
And then I did some research and there's something called, it's
00:41:24
not a sitting table, but there's these exterior tables that are
00:41:28
quite wide. And they're used in Korea for
00:41:31
people to lie down in the garden, to sit, to have a
00:41:34
picnic. They're even in gardens, so a
00:41:37
whole different use of tables. And I thought that was so clever
00:41:41
to put that in there because OK, the Jingle Bells, it is a
00:41:47
reference to a sound that is used in rituals in, in the whole
00:41:51
of Asia really, not really only in Korea.
00:41:54
You may see it or not, you know, you may kind of get the the gist
00:41:58
of it, but then you get a very specific reference whereby you
00:42:02
are in touch with a culture that is Uber specific.
00:42:07
Then that's a that's there's, there's a super specificity of
00:42:10
this piece that I really loved. I thought it was so clever.
00:42:13
And then on the side of it, you have a work called Duo, which
00:42:17
means outside. She probably did it when she was
00:42:19
doing her residency in Paris. It's a slide piece.
00:42:22
So it's a slide projector projecting these old drawings
00:42:28
and I noticed that each one of them, each page, so they're kind
00:42:31
of scanned or photographed and each page has has these parts
00:42:39
that are marked or or hidden with a marker, black marker.
00:42:45
And it's all the same kind of colour, a bit yellowish drawings
00:42:50
or prints of these organ, urban organization of space.
00:42:57
So this modernist idea of the city, this utopian idea of what
00:43:02
it is, a city by the seaside, what it is, a leisure space in
00:43:07
the city, what it is high rises. How are they together in the
00:43:11
city? How are they placed along the
00:43:14
streets? How are the streets organized?
00:43:16
It's a very kind of, and I like the yellow part of it.
00:43:20
It it's a bit melancholy. And you see side by side these
00:43:24
two aspects that you're going to traverse the whole show.
00:43:27
Even though she let go of the more social things, she's more
00:43:30
interested in biography, but she lets go of that kind of social,
00:43:36
almost anthropological aspects to the image of the image.
00:43:40
And she goes on to materials. But it's really interesting to
00:43:43
see that she's really looking at the effects that modernism had
00:43:49
on cultures that weren't the breeding grounds of, of those
00:43:54
shapes and those ideals and those utopias.
00:43:58
So that was interesting. And then there's a big
00:44:01
installation of abstracts, drawings made with sanding
00:44:06
paper, these cones that end with kind of these circular shapes
00:44:12
and on tracing paper that she either purchased or she made.
00:44:17
She had, she had, she produced herself, she she designed
00:44:20
herself that have kind of these squares coming out.
00:44:24
So they're no longer really, it's not tracing paper, sorry.
00:44:28
It's millimetric paper. You call it that paper that has
00:44:32
kind of the lines, the grids marks for architecture and
00:44:37
technical drawing. And then you have a photograph
00:44:43
printed in and on the wall that depicts the sort.
00:44:48
It's huge. It's black and white and depicts
00:44:50
a sort of garden exterior. And those kind of very abstract
00:44:56
shapes are on top of it. And so that's the very eventful
00:45:02
entrance of the exhibition. And that so in that first room,
00:45:06
you know, I I talked to the docent that was doing the
00:45:11
twirling. The shaking of the rope.
00:45:12
Yeah, exactly. And then he told me the whole,
00:45:16
the whole folklore story about the kids.
00:45:20
And then and then I was chatting with another another guy who
00:45:25
worked at the gallery and he was telling me about the Van Gogh
00:45:29
exhibition that like. As a National Gallery.
00:45:33
That's it. Yeah.
00:45:34
And, and he was saying how much he loved it and da, da, da.
00:45:37
And. And there was part of me that
00:45:38
was like, he's waxing really lyrical about, you know,
00:45:42
grandmasters, You know, I wonder what he thinks of the show.
00:45:45
And then he started just effusively talking about the
00:45:50
Haggy Yang show and. And he was like, oh, and there
00:45:54
she is. She just walked through.
00:45:56
She just got through the exhibition.
00:45:58
I was like, yeah, Emily, I know, I know.
00:46:02
I was like, wow. So she's here, which I find very
00:46:06
exciting and distracting at the same time, always because it's
00:46:10
like. You're the only person this
00:46:11
shouldn't happen to you because you get distracted by the
00:46:13
presence of the. Artists Totally, totally.
00:46:16
And then I'm like, oh, wow, is that, you know, but she, she
00:46:19
literally just walked like through the, through the floor,
00:46:23
you know, across the floor and then went down to the lower
00:46:26
around floor because, and we'll get to this.
00:46:30
She has a bit of the exhibition that she puts up week by week.
00:46:34
So every Tuesday she'll she goes in and decides how to how to
00:46:40
change the exhibition, which also makes it feel very alive.
00:46:43
Just a note to say that Drip Drop BLOB Dons trustworthy #2028
00:46:49
is the, is the title of these abstract drawings that I'm
00:46:52
trying to describe. Yeah, and they're from two,
00:46:56
2013. And then the picture in the
00:46:59
background is called Poetics of Displacement and it's from 2011.
00:47:05
So there's really, I mean, she really drops a few hints, even
00:47:10
this idea of abstraction. And if you buy the catalogue,
00:47:13
there's one of the very few. Really interesting texts that
00:47:17
I've read, I haven't finished yet about abstraction.
00:47:21
Really interesting. And what it is that an artist
00:47:25
like her is taken from is taking from the history of obstruction
00:47:32
and what that history is besides the European history.
00:47:36
It's really interesting. So, so then you go to the second
00:47:40
level of the exhibition. Then you can kind of see from
00:47:43
that ground level, she again included the staff of the
00:47:52
institution to decide on what colour that whole room would be
00:47:57
painted in. Oh.
00:47:59
Really, I miss. That, yes, it's written, yeah.
00:48:02
There's a little label that says that that colour was chosen by
00:48:07
the team that was working with her.
00:48:09
I love that. And they chose an almost Yves
00:48:13
Klan blue because Yves Klan, the artists invented a blue, I think
00:48:19
even patented it, patented it. Not sure about what I'm saying,
00:48:26
but I mean, it's his blue. So it's known as the Yves Klan
00:48:29
blue. And that blue is very close to
00:48:32
it. So he produced many paintings in
00:48:35
that blue and sculptures, objects, etcetera.
00:48:40
Eve clan. I mean, so that's the and it's
00:48:45
the Eve clan blue is radiating, it radiates.
00:48:48
It's a very, it's a very peculiar colour because it's
00:48:52
very dense. And at the same time it has a
00:48:55
fourth, a form of it. It has some light at the same
00:48:58
time it's deep and light. So it's a very strong room with
00:49:03
these incredible sculptures and these lines stenciled on the
00:49:10
ground. So there's this whole activity,
00:49:14
this whole movement on the ground that are seemingly, I
00:49:19
presume, notations for the movement of the sculptures
00:49:23
because all the sculptures move. And then there's another work on
00:49:28
the wall that is text like pages of books onto these rather
00:49:37
unremarkable circles or shapes. They're not quite circular, but
00:49:43
they become circular because you can activate them or you can
00:49:46
make them rotate really quickly until they be, they form a
00:49:50
perfect circle. And the pages, the, the book
00:49:54
pages are about activists, writers, creative people who are
00:50:01
politically active. So there's a reference to
00:50:05
Ghassan kind of kind of funny, I think a Palestinian writer and
00:50:11
activist. There's references to many, you
00:50:15
know, to, to, to very different people from all over the world.
00:50:19
And I kind of sensed it might have been a reference to her mom
00:50:24
as well. I mean, she always has this idea
00:50:26
and she talks about it in an interview that for her, it was
00:50:31
kind of a territory where she couldn't go because her family
00:50:35
were political, they were activists, and she's an artist.
00:50:38
So how do you articulate the spaces of action?
00:50:45
That room feels alive. You are there in the midst of
00:50:53
all of it. I mean, you cannot help but be a
00:50:55
part of what is happening in that room because of because
00:51:01
you're. Yeah, you're literally in the
00:51:03
middle of it. So all of these sculptures or
00:51:06
what? There's one hanging from the
00:51:07
ceiling that has the Venetian blinds, but the rest of them are
00:51:12
all on caster wheels, so you can see that they move and they look
00:51:17
like friendly objects. They look like structure as you
00:51:20
might want to jump into SO. Oh, they're stacked corners,
00:51:25
ventilating orange and Blue Square, which is really
00:51:28
beautiful. So this is the first time we
00:51:30
encounter works made with Venetian blinds.
00:51:32
So Venetian blinds really are a staple of her creation.
00:51:38
She really uses them repeatedly. Yeah, so there's that one.
00:51:43
There's reflected red, blue Cubist dancing mask, which is
00:51:47
supposed to hide your whole body and to kind of have these shapes
00:51:53
a little bit like an African mask because modernism was so
00:51:57
inspired by African masks and you're supposed to make it swirl
00:52:02
and hide behind it, but it's like this deep blue.
00:52:06
Then there's these red, it looks like the game Tangram.
00:52:10
I don't know if I think we're the only family who has that
00:52:13
game. It's like these geometric pieces
00:52:17
and you have a card with a shape and you have to recreate the
00:52:19
shape with like a triangle, a square, you know, these
00:52:23
different pieces. And it's sometimes quite kind of
00:52:26
hard. You can spend like 35 minutes on
00:52:27
it. And it made me think of that.
00:52:29
Then they can become shapes like almost anthropomorphic or boats
00:52:34
or objects or animals. It's it's quite Asian actually.
00:52:39
I think it's probably an Asian game.
00:52:40
And this piece kind of made me think of that.
00:52:44
There's the rounding intermediates.
00:52:46
So some of them are part of the group of works that she calls
00:52:51
the intermediates, right? Yeah.
00:52:55
So do you want to explain what those are?
00:52:56
They're very colorful, they're very tactile.
00:52:59
They have kind of knobs and sort of ribbons coming out of them.
00:53:04
And when I was there, there was almost a a pair of women that
00:53:08
were getting very close to touching them because you almost
00:53:12
can't help yourself. And the dolphin was over very
00:53:15
quickly to say, no, I'm sorry, you can't, you can't touch
00:53:18
these. You know, they, they do have
00:53:21
the, the, the gallery staff come and, and operate them and kind
00:53:27
of, you know, move them around from time to time.
00:53:29
That didn't happen while I was there, but the, the experience
00:53:33
of being in the middle of that because there's the objects that
00:53:37
move. There are these friendly aliens.
00:53:40
There's this African, you know, kind of mask ish sculpture you
00:53:46
you talked about, and then there's the ones that you could
00:53:49
get in like with the Venetian blinds.
00:53:51
And then there's another big structure with the Jingle Bells
00:53:55
and the Venetian blinds that that someone actually does get
00:53:58
in the middle of to operate. And it felt like that feeling of
00:54:02
being in a kid, being a kid and getting a big box and playing
00:54:07
house, you know, like, yes, it's really small, but I want to be
00:54:10
in there and feel what it feels like to be in there.
00:54:14
And things will change. I will feel differently in that
00:54:17
space. And that's what it felt like
00:54:21
looking at those, but then being in the center of it because the,
00:54:26
the, the, the other thing that these sculptures do is play with
00:54:31
light and there's light, you know, around and the, the
00:54:35
shadows that they cast are remarkable.
00:54:39
And they're casting those shadows on a floor that have
00:54:43
these sketches that you described on them.
00:54:46
So it is just a swirling, a, a, a feeling of being in, in
00:54:52
something that is alive because they can all move.
00:54:54
And, you know, they can all move.
00:54:56
And in the back of your mind, you're kind of half waiting for
00:54:59
them to do so and half waiting for your own hands to just match
00:55:04
them. I could empathize with those two
00:55:07
ladies so much. So these intermediates are parts
00:55:13
of and that's why it's very hard to describe them because they
00:55:18
are parts of a project. So from the moment where in 2015
00:55:22
she went to Seoul and she had that big exhibition at the Liam
00:55:26
Museum, she started working with basket weaving with lots of
00:55:33
traditional crafts that are not. So the, the, the status of those
00:55:39
crafts is not the same as in Europe or let's say in the
00:55:42
Occidental world, or at least in the system of the arts in Europe
00:55:48
and America and, you know, and the other countries touched by
00:55:53
our notion here of the arts and the arts hierarchies.
00:55:58
So for us, crafts, unfortunately always comes kind of at the
00:56:01
bottom. The kind of lesser art in Korea,
00:56:04
not so much. So it's complex.
00:56:07
There's a big Museum of crafts there's it's taken seriously,
00:56:12
it's collected, it's revered so much so that when she tried to
00:56:18
learn, no one wanted to teach her, like they didn't understand
00:56:22
what she was doing. And she finally found a kind
00:56:25
hearted, open minded person who taught her and who was willing
00:56:30
to help her and so started this project.
00:56:33
And it's hard to describe because it's kind of like
00:56:36
baskets gone gone crazy. Like suddenly rather than have
00:56:39
being open and carrying stuff, they kind of close up.
00:56:43
Then they have these beautiful degrade colors, Blues and
00:56:47
yellows, oranges and Reds. Then there's stuff coming off of
00:56:50
them. And then suddenly they look like
00:56:52
sea animals, sea creatures. There's another creature that
00:56:56
makes me think a bit of a pinata with these cones coming off of
00:57:03
it and these really beautiful colors that just really work
00:57:09
well together somehow. You know, it's kind of lime
00:57:12
green and red and this kind of mid intensity blue and it's
00:57:21
complex and then they have handles and that's really
00:57:24
interesting because there's this haptic quality to the work.
00:57:27
And it's true that I maybe am way too well behaved or perhaps
00:57:32
traumatized by being pranked by a security guard as I entered.
00:57:36
And for me was out of the question, like I was not
00:57:39
touching anything else in this exhibition.
00:57:42
And and I was not lucky. Like no one activated anything
00:57:46
while while I was there. And I was really taken by the
00:57:50
whole room. And there's another piece that
00:57:52
is kind of homage to solar width.
00:57:54
I don't think we have time to talk about her love for solar
00:57:56
width. Just to say that the notion of
00:58:00
leap, so leap year is a leap year, obviously a gap year or
00:58:04
whatever, but the notion of leap for solely wit is applied in
00:58:10
terms of being in a sort of technical form of existence or
00:58:16
action. And then leaping to an the same
00:58:19
thing can leap into a conceptual existence, for example.
00:58:22
So there's a sort of a leap and he says that artists are
00:58:25
mysticists rather than rationalists.
00:58:27
You know, they can leap to conclusions that, you know,
00:58:30
reason cannot support. So for her, the idea of leap is
00:58:34
really important and she loves solar.
00:58:36
There's lots of or she emulates him some somehow titles are
00:58:41
great. I think that the thing with her
00:58:43
that I so admire is that everything is so carefully
00:58:48
thought through, but with lots but with a poetic kind of
00:58:52
simplicity. She has another exhibition.
00:58:56
She had a big retrospective exhibition at the Lutwig Museum
00:58:59
in 2018 that was called ETA 1998, 2018, which is just, yeah,
00:59:07
estimated time of arrival, 1998, and which probably was the
00:59:13
survey, you know, between those years of production.
00:59:17
Yeah. So she has this kind of notion
00:59:20
of time and space as a sort of a movement between forms of
00:59:25
consciousness almost. It's so interesting.
00:59:28
I think that's so right. I think you've really hit the
00:59:30
nail on the head because I, I, while I was going through the
00:59:34
exhibition, I kept feeling this notion or hearing this, this
00:59:38
phrase of this feels like fully formed ideas, you know, that.
00:59:43
And I couldn't, I couldn't really pinpoint what I even
00:59:46
meant by that. But I think what you're saying
00:59:49
is just that she, you know, there's some things that are
00:59:51
simple, like, I mean, even the Venetian blinds are, they're
00:59:54
kind of simple in their own way. I mean, they're a simple
00:59:57
structure in and of themselves. But I I you get the sense like
01:00:02
there can be simplicity that is a lightweight.
01:00:06
And simplicity that is, not, that is.
01:00:09
That has a. Lot of gravity to it.
01:00:12
And she is that ladder and it's I, I love that it's almost
01:00:17
ineffable kind of to to really pinpoint what that, you know,
01:00:22
it's a it's a distinction with a huge difference, you know, and
01:00:26
yeah, she's great. I mean, I loved just going back
01:00:30
to the, the kind of basket weaving animals that was the
01:00:35
they're not animals necessarily. I mean, they were kind of
01:00:38
inspired by Japanese and Korean like those giant puppets that
01:00:46
they have in parades that take many people to perform with that
01:00:52
are phenomenal to watch. So they're kind of, they're sort
01:00:55
of smaller versions of those somehow.
01:00:58
And that was the only place I, I, I felt like they were all
01:01:01
kind of cramped in the corner. I was like, I want them to be.
01:01:05
I wanted a big space. But so you go up the stairs and
01:01:09
as you go up, you enter a room that has a lot of the works with
01:01:15
Venetian blinds. There's separations made by
01:01:18
Venetian blinds, which is kind of the most chaotic room, let's
01:01:23
say, where she tried to cramp a lot of stuff in there.
01:01:26
There's a big piece called, I think, Reuben Noir.
01:01:31
It's a street where Marguerite Giras lived in Paris, but she
01:01:35
doesn't state. I mean, there's lots of texts
01:01:37
explaining lots of stuff in the exhibition.
01:01:40
So you get a lot of information from the texts.
01:01:44
And so apparently that piece is based on every appliance she had
01:01:48
at home at the time, and it's the exact size of Margaret
01:01:53
Jehas's apartment or one of the rooms.
01:01:58
So there's a sort of superimposition between two
01:02:00
lives. And across the exhibition, there
01:02:03
are these references of people that she kind of merges with in
01:02:10
some way. So there's her mum, there's
01:02:13
those political activists that are mentioned downstairs.
01:02:17
There's Marguerite Juras, who obviously, and this is this is
01:02:21
the apartment where where she lived while from memory, she was
01:02:25
waiting for her husband to come back from the wall.
01:02:29
And he comes back emaciated like to a point where he looked like
01:02:34
he was dead to her. It was a kind of a there's a
01:02:38
book called, I think it's Levy material in Material Life where
01:02:41
she talks about this. And so there's so it's that
01:02:45
period, like very strange period, which is akin to her own
01:02:50
life where she just South Korea just came out of a dictatorship.
01:02:55
Her father went through what he went through.
01:02:57
And then she kind of emerges in a freer life, a freer context.
01:03:02
And then there's a piece that I loved the most, one of them,
01:03:08
which is disappointing because her work is amazing, her work
01:03:12
with materials is incredible. But that just broke me.
01:03:16
The texts on the wall. So there's 12 printed a A4 pages
01:03:21
on the wall basically, which are a correspondence between her
01:03:24
mother and herself. Oh yeah.
01:03:26
Yeah, or where the two of them decided to talk about her mom's
01:03:31
arrival in Germany. And so the two of them have are
01:03:35
talking about the same period of time and how they experienced
01:03:39
each other's presence, how the mom experienced Germany and how,
01:03:44
hey, Wei Young experienced her arrival, the arrival of her mom
01:03:49
in Germany, her idea of what who her mom was and who she really
01:03:54
was there. And it's, I found the story
01:04:01
absolutely heartbreaking in its banality and it's and it's.
01:04:08
Was there like the flooding? Wasn't there the flooding of the
01:04:11
bathroom? So the mum at some point finds
01:04:13
herself taking a bath because that's the thing that connects
01:04:17
her to Korea, because in Korea you wash yourself thoroughly.
01:04:22
And baths are important. They clean your soul.
01:04:25
They have a significance, They're spiritual.
01:04:28
And so she goes and draws a bath.
01:04:31
And then when she wants to drain the water away, she goes into a
01:04:35
panic because there's no, there's no drain.
01:04:41
And so she calls Hague Young and says what is happening?
01:04:48
Your, your, your apartment is faulty.
01:04:51
There's no drain. Where is the drain?
01:04:52
Where is the drain? She gets really panicky and only
01:04:56
to realise later when her daughter tells her that in
01:04:59
Germany people don't bathe like that.
01:05:01
That's not how it works. You go into the bathtub and you
01:05:04
don't just put water all over the bathroom like in Korea.
01:05:09
And again, it's like that piece with the sitting tables, such a
01:05:13
small she doesn't need to say a lot.
01:05:17
You don't need her biography. You don't need her to tell you
01:05:20
500 anecdotes of the differences between cultures because this is
01:05:24
far more deep than that. This is when you realize in
01:05:28
another language that there's a word for something that doesn't
01:05:32
exist in some other language that you speak.
01:05:34
And you think, what a moment of solitude.
01:05:38
There's also this cultural solitude that you can be in and
01:05:43
this emancipation through things that are so familiar to you that
01:05:48
suddenly is not possible even if you were to do them.
01:05:52
There's something that's not magical anymore.
01:05:54
There's something. So there's a lot to say about
01:05:56
these this piece, and it's against these very cold objects.
01:06:02
So one thing to say about, hey, we're young that I kind of
01:06:06
struggle with a little bit is that the objects are perfect.
01:06:09
Yeah. They're just, you know, the
01:06:11
appliances with the Venetian blinds with everything's so
01:06:15
clean, everything's so perfect. Everything's measured to the
01:06:18
millimeter, everything's produced.
01:06:21
And the light comes. And then and suddenly you're
01:06:23
looking at the box that's covered with the beneath that
01:06:26
has a sort of Venetian blinds hiding what's inside.
01:06:28
And there's the sunset tea light that emanates through it and
01:06:31
that you know, and everything's just so beautiful and just so
01:06:37
elegantly done. And then you realize where that
01:06:42
comes from. And there's this kind of, there
01:06:45
was a sort of a moment there in that room when I was thinking,
01:06:49
this makes me think of the odds where we weren't.
01:06:52
This kind of effervescence of working with standardized and
01:06:56
mass produced materials and having international careers and
01:07:00
exhibiting from country to country guilt free, anything was
01:07:04
possible. This was before obviously 2008
01:07:10
and there's this thing at end of the 90s and there's this thing
01:07:13
sometimes in her work that takes me back to that time because the
01:07:17
use of mass product, mass produced materials inevitably
01:07:24
will tell me that it will bring me to that idea of these
01:07:28
Venetian blinds are all over the world.
01:07:30
And that's her point as well. You can find them in Brazil, you
01:07:34
can find them in Yucatan, you can find them in Porto, you can
01:07:38
find them everywhere. But there's also the fact that
01:07:42
they're the materials that you're making the work with, and
01:07:45
then suddenly the work becomes desensitized because it is using
01:07:50
those materials and it's saying that thing.
01:07:54
But I think she's talking about culture and I'm thinking of
01:07:57
production, but I can't really separate the two, if that makes
01:08:01
sense. So there's a part of me and her
01:08:03
work that kind of goes back to that time.
01:08:06
And there's a quote of her where there's a in an interview in the
01:08:12
catalogue where she's talking about the way she works.
01:08:17
It kind of struck me, and I'm going to read it to you.
01:08:20
So she says, I have been working at Stardust Shula, my alma
01:08:24
mater, since 2017. And these days my schedule is
01:08:28
predetermined by my teaching job and the academic calendar during
01:08:34
the So you think, oh, she's doesn't have a lot of time to
01:08:37
work. And then she says, during the
01:08:39
semester, I stay in Berlin and travel in Europe and North
01:08:42
America. So already like, oh, leap
01:08:46
Europe, North America. And during the school break, I
01:08:50
do my work in and out of Seoul. OK, Well, she's, you know that
01:08:55
the dimension of her life is huge.
01:08:59
I'm trying to spend more time in Asia.
01:09:01
Last December, for example, I was in Bangkok in Chiang Rai,
01:09:05
Thailand for three weeks. I spent a couple of days in
01:09:08
Manila in March 2024 and I wish to go back to the Philippines
01:09:12
soon on a long desired field trip to trace and explore
01:09:17
pabolat, the tradition of paper cutting in a Filipino context.
01:09:21
Pabolat has a very vague origin. It may have been derived from
01:09:25
Chinese paper cutting brought by Chinese merchants, or could have
01:09:30
could also have been an offshoot of the Mexican technique of
01:09:33
papel picado in this paragraph. Since 2017, we've been all over
01:09:40
the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:09:43
And to me, and it's also, I have a question and unfortunately,
01:09:47
you're not Asian, you can't tell me.
01:09:48
But for me, it's really weird because I keep thinking about if
01:09:53
I'm Portuguese. There's a lot of, you know, arts
01:09:55
and crafts in Portugal. What would it mean if an artist
01:10:00
went back to basket weavers and what and started kind of using
01:10:04
those techniques to make big objects?
01:10:07
And we have an artist who does that Joanna Bash con selves.
01:10:10
And then there's another installation that is about the
01:10:14
first work she did in Korea, which was to go back to her
01:10:19
grandparents home. That was derelict, basically in
01:10:25
shambles and do an art installation there.
01:10:29
And that is absolutely incredible.
01:10:32
So she has those two aspects of the migrant who is in the Super
01:10:38
modern in Germany, in Germany is not what it was, but in Germany,
01:10:42
so a highly historically industrialized country.
01:10:48
And at the same time, she has that thing of I'm going to go
01:10:51
back to that home. I'm going to work with origami
01:10:56
work. I mean, origami might not be the
01:10:57
correct word. I don't know if it's translates
01:11:00
to Korea. I'm going to work with lamps,
01:11:03
lights, little objects and the installations.
01:11:07
It's called Saigon 30. I think it's it was an
01:11:10
exhibition and she and she kept the notes that people left about
01:11:15
the exhibition that were super moving and they're projected
01:11:18
onto a Venetian blind. And that's where it shifted for
01:11:22
me. And I thought, OK, OK, there
01:11:24
really is something where she's incredibly honest.
01:11:28
You know, what I'm hearing you say is that she's kept the
01:11:31
threads. You know, she hasn't moved
01:11:34
around and dropped the threads necessarily of, you know, art
01:11:39
that influenced her as a child or things than experiences she
01:11:43
had when she was younger. It's like it's all built in
01:11:48
rather than, oh, I'm moving here, so I'm dropping this.
01:11:52
It's like, I mean, you know, I guess actually like her big
01:11:57
piece of, you know, unpacking all of her, the storage piece.
01:12:01
The storage piece. Yeah, exactly.
01:12:03
She takes it with her like she's not, she's she's she's building
01:12:07
onto and folding into rather than, you know, just sort of
01:12:11
dropping and being like, OK, now I'm going to go for this very
01:12:14
clean, you know, mass produced aesthetic.
01:12:18
It's it's that it all is coming from that place.
01:12:22
And yeah, maybe that's where the weight is, you know, is that you
01:12:25
can feel that in. It was just reading this article
01:12:29
in The Atlantic by Annie Lowry about like, basically it was
01:12:33
like women put down the vacuums. It was like a, it was a, it was
01:12:37
a thing about domestic labour and there was a bit.
01:12:42
Eternal question. The forever right and it's like
01:12:46
there's married women do more domestic labour than single
01:12:51
women, but married men do not do more domestic labour than single
01:12:56
men. Like, you know, shock.
01:12:58
Yeah, exactly. And, and her, I mean, her, her
01:13:03
kind of point of it was, you know, just just put down the
01:13:06
like, let's not, let's stop killing ourselves for feeling
01:13:10
like we need to rise to a standard of very tidy homes and
01:13:13
therefore performing our gender in that way.
01:13:16
That's a little off course, but the but I liked that that Hagi
01:13:22
Yang was using those very familiar, unimportant domestic
01:13:28
objects. I mean, who's who is looking
01:13:31
after the blinds, you know, I mean, I have taken a wet rag in
01:13:35
my spring cleaning and wiped each and every blind of the
01:13:40
thick dust that manages to get caked on there.
01:13:44
And, you know, so, so I feel like my connection to those
01:13:50
domestic objects are so deep, I can't even I did, you know, you
01:13:58
don't even realize it right until you see them reflected in
01:14:02
the way that she has presented them.
01:14:05
And it's like, wow, there is like, these are the things of
01:14:08
our lives. These are the things that are in
01:14:10
our homes and you know, what we're interacting with every
01:14:14
day. And it would be very, very easy
01:14:16
to say, you know, that that's just very low, you know, and
01:14:20
she's not trying to be as clever about them.
01:14:24
No. She's not trying.
01:14:26
To be What do you mean by that? I know what I think, but what do
01:14:30
you mean? Well, I can you say that?
01:14:33
I mean, like Mike Kelly, for example, is very clever.
01:14:37
He is being in your face with it.
01:14:39
And I'm saying something with this, and this is the thing, and
01:14:42
I'm going to shock you a little bit with what I'm saying.
01:14:44
Or just, you know, kind of give you a barrage of senses with,
01:14:51
you know, this thing, this twirling curtain, you know, or
01:14:54
whatever it is. And she's not, she's, she's
01:14:57
saying this is a, you know, this is a thing that we can make a
01:15:02
construction from that will be a beautiful object in and of
01:15:06
itself, you know, without any kind of tongue in cheek.
01:15:09
Gotcha. I mean those Venetian blinds
01:15:13
again with the light and the shadows on the on the ground and
01:15:18
the the way that they hold. The image in the middle of the
01:15:23
room and create spaces and our screens that films are projected
01:15:28
onto. And there's this kind of idea of
01:15:33
the ritualization of the everyday life is the deep
01:15:39
feeling that the meaning is there as soon as you displace
01:15:46
it. It's kind of sad.
01:15:47
It's a bit melancholy. Thinking of those Venetian blind
01:15:51
structures, it's like they're very rigid in a way.
01:15:56
They're, they're strong, you know, they're, they're cubes
01:16:00
stacked on cubes stacked on cubes often.
01:16:05
And that's a very strong looking structure.
01:16:08
But then the blinds themselves have that delicacy of letting
01:16:12
through the light. And there's something wonderful
01:16:15
about the intersection of and the play of that that I think
01:16:19
makes them just such a pleasure to be in the presence of, you
01:16:24
know, that that that it's so much is true about this thing.
01:16:28
And you know, it's, it's very simply demonstrating that.
01:16:34
So, yeah. And it and it, it kind of
01:16:37
relates to the mesmerizing mesh pieces.
01:16:41
Yeah, so. She want to talk about those
01:16:44
That's that's the her most recent work basically.
01:16:48
She did. She did them mostly during COVID
01:16:52
and they're pieces on a wall and they are.
01:16:57
When I first looked at them, my first thought was like, oh,
01:16:59
tissue paper. It looks like tissue paper
01:17:02
because it's very colorful, very delicate paper that she's cut
01:17:06
into colleges to look like. They're like different spirits I
01:17:11
guess. Well, there's different, there's
01:17:13
different groups of them. So some of them are like these
01:17:16
patterns, these shapes, they're more abstract and there's some
01:17:21
that are more figural. Let's say that they have these
01:17:23
more kind of almost totemic like creatures.
01:17:28
Some of them are almost like animals.
01:17:32
Some of them start looking like something and then destructure
01:17:35
or, or, or a just structure at some point.
01:17:38
And they look like those drawings that you make when
01:17:41
you're a kid, when you you fold paper and you cut with scissors
01:17:45
and then you open them. So this was a rabbit hole I went
01:17:50
down. Hanji.
01:17:51
It's called Hanji paper. OK, tell me.
01:17:55
So, you know, if we're going back to the delicate but strong
01:17:59
theme, this is absolutely it. So it's made from Mulberry bark
01:18:05
because, yeah, when I first saw it, I was like, oh, it's, this
01:18:07
is the kind of childlike, it looks like tissue paper.
01:18:09
It has that kind of color quality, etcetera.
01:18:12
And then when I was online and she was talking about this Hanji
01:18:17
paper, that sort of traditional Korean Japanese paper, it's made
01:18:21
from the bulk of Mulberry trees. The, the bark is mixed with kind
01:18:27
of the slime of other roots. So like it's, it's, you know,
01:18:33
put in sort of a VAT and then it's, you know, put together
01:18:37
with the slime so that it has something that congeals it a bit
01:18:40
like putting an egg in, you know, something that you're
01:18:43
baking. And then, you know, it has to be
01:18:46
made by hand. And it's a, it's a really
01:18:50
artistic process in and of itself to make this paper, but
01:18:55
it can last for 1000 years. The works themselves are really
01:19:01
arresting. I mean, they are just, they
01:19:04
really grab your attention and they have a lot of presence,
01:19:08
whatever the form is. I mean, those sort of Titanic
01:19:11
figures you were talking about, I would say in particular, but
01:19:16
and it also made me think just, you know, someone who she was in
01:19:19
Korea during COVID. She was stuck there, yeah.
01:19:23
Yeah, yeah. And I just love the fact that
01:19:27
she was like, what do I have to hand?
01:19:30
What is near me and what, you know, what, what, what what can
01:19:34
I make that's brilliant out of this?
01:19:36
That it, it just, I loved the notion of her kind of being
01:19:40
trapped wherever she was, as we all were, and just sitting there
01:19:45
and figuring out how to produce these incredible works.
01:19:50
Yeah, I just love that. I I read a little bit of the
01:19:54
parts of the catalogue that talks about them.
01:19:56
So she was looking into shamanism.
01:19:59
And so these papers are used in shamanistic rituals.
01:20:02
Another thing that I thought particularly when I read that
01:20:06
this had to do so, I was arrested by the beauty of it and
01:20:11
I was kind of. Stuck there looking at them.
01:20:14
And then when I read the text that had to do with shamanistic
01:20:17
practices, again, I go back to that thing, which is a question
01:20:21
in the out world, which is that when you're not a shaman
01:20:24
yourself, when you go and take someone else's beliefs through
01:20:30
their techniques or take the techniques outside of the
01:20:33
beliefs and outside of the rituals and the practices and
01:20:36
the system that they're within. I, I think there's a lot of
01:20:41
questions in there. There's a lot of things that you
01:20:44
can ask yourself, What does that mean?
01:20:46
Is, is it a bit soulless, you know, to, to come and grab these
01:20:51
things and to then produce these perfect pieces.
01:20:57
And then she explains that in order to better convey this
01:21:02
context, she enshrined them. So there's around the drawings,
01:21:07
there's this frame that replicates religious or
01:21:13
spiritual architectures, temples as frames.
01:21:21
Then I was reading further and apparently so we were saying
01:21:25
that the arts and crafts are respected in Korea, but there's
01:21:29
again, no one escapes globalism, I guess.
01:21:32
So in Korea, there's this phenomenon of even the curator
01:21:40
of shamanism in the Arts and Crafts Museum or in maybe
01:21:45
another museum, I, I may remember incorrectly, is being a
01:21:49
bit discriminated. So shamanism is really being
01:21:53
discarded in society. It was considered backwards.
01:21:56
So if you stay there, you think, OK, so this is a global
01:22:00
phenomenon and all these traditions that existed up until
01:22:05
now are dying. But actually, if you read
01:22:08
further in the to the catalogue is amazing, I have to say.
01:22:10
It's so nice, easy to read, good texts.
01:22:15
And so apparently during Confucius time, shamanism was
01:22:20
also not well considered and even dangerous to practice.
01:22:25
So shamanism has always had this status of this difficult status
01:22:32
within Korean society. It complexifies this question
01:22:36
that I was asking, which is this?
01:22:39
OK, Well, I'm skirting around the the term of appropriation.
01:22:42
Like, are you appropriating something?
01:22:45
And what does that mean? You're an immigrant, you go back
01:22:48
to your country and you appropriate these techniques
01:22:51
that you haven't even experienced.
01:22:53
You know, it's the same with when I see perfect sculptures
01:22:57
with basket weaving techniques, There's always this moment where
01:23:00
I think, oh, not the question of appropriation.
01:23:03
That's not really the thing, but it's that thing of is art
01:23:06
capable of bringing the energy, the beauty, and something from
01:23:13
these beliefs and from these practices and from these social
01:23:17
structures into society, into culture by doing this?
01:23:24
Or is this the symptom of a dying culture and a way perhaps
01:23:31
to take it somewhere else or to pay homage to it and even to
01:23:35
mourn it? You know, because her creatures
01:23:38
are like celebratory creatures. I like parade creatures for
01:23:41
sure. I.
01:23:42
Mean, yeah, yeah. So I mean, is it, is it a case
01:23:46
of she should leave this work to people who feel it?
01:23:52
Oh no, I would not ever say or prescribe anything to anyone.
01:23:56
I think if there's a compulsion to make, there's a question to
01:23:59
be asked. I think it's a valid question.
01:24:03
I don't have the answers for it. And I loved the exhibition.
01:24:06
I really, really loved the exhibition.
01:24:10
I and I think good art asks these questions and we ourselves
01:24:16
do things, consume things, produce things that may be
01:24:22
symptoms of problematic situations of gentrification.
01:24:29
You know, I don't like these tours in Paris.
01:24:31
They're uncomfortable. I prefer Starbucks, much more
01:24:34
comfortable. I never go there because I have,
01:24:37
I have principles. But if you give me a good pub or
01:24:40
a good cafe, let's say with the goods couches, I don't like the
01:24:45
Bistro. I would love the Bistro to
01:24:46
disappear. I don't like it, you know, but
01:24:48
it's a tradition, right? So.
01:24:50
Sure, sure. This is a very, very silly
01:24:54
example, but you know what I mean.
01:24:56
I'm not prescribing anything. I'm asking questions because I
01:24:59
think these works make you think of these things.
01:25:02
And then and in the text and in her interviews, you can see that
01:25:05
she's thinking about these things.
01:25:07
She's thinking like any migrant would.
01:25:09
I think migration enhances those experiences of loss and of
01:25:14
transmission and of political programs that cancel out a lot
01:25:23
of ways of existing. I mean, the Portuguese
01:25:26
dictatorship ended or all our dialects, there's only one
01:25:29
surviving dialect in the Portuguese metropolitan area.
01:25:34
You know, that's my question. That's.
01:25:35
A good question, yeah. I mean, and kind of like how,
01:25:39
how essential is the death, like death, death of a dialect or
01:25:42
death of a, you know, a culture or death of a thing is a, is a
01:25:47
natural state of affairs as well, I guess.
01:25:51
So it's like, but how much and under what conditions?
01:25:56
Yeah, exactly. Yes, yeah, that's it.
01:25:59
Under what conditions? If it's dying a natural death
01:26:04
like Latin did, sure. You know, it's a, it's, it's a
01:26:10
very specific and I think her pointing out to shamanism is
01:26:14
connected with abstraction, with her immense knowledge of
01:26:18
contemporary arts. And how I think we mentioned
01:26:22
this, or I mentioned this somewhere in another episode,
01:26:25
we're looking at the history of modernism as very, very
01:26:28
patriarchal and even imperialistic because Picasso
01:26:32
was inspired by African mosques, you know, and kind of invented
01:26:37
Cubism. Do you know what I mean?
01:26:38
So there's this thing of of really being very careful now
01:26:42
with maybe deeper connections to images.
01:26:48
Contemporary art is not an Asian notion.
01:26:51
It's an important notion. So she is working in something
01:26:57
that was a colonization, you know, of the Asian or, or let's
01:27:03
say of Korea, but also the Asian continent and culture.
01:27:07
There was no contemporary art. You know, there's, there's, it's
01:27:11
a practice that is imported. And in the beginning, she, you
01:27:14
know, in the museums in Korea, you mostly had European or
01:27:18
American exhibitions. You didn't have Korean artists
01:27:21
showing. And she was one of the first
01:27:23
artists to show in the Leo Museum.
01:27:25
And she's also talking to professionals and to the museum.
01:27:29
You know, what does it mean to have an exhibition that is
01:27:32
ongoing that you have to activate and that you have to
01:27:36
reinstall, which is storage piece?
01:27:38
Yeah, it's hard to describe without describing the room that
01:27:42
it's in. So in there's sort of three
01:27:45
interconnecting rooms and all of the, the, the walls between them
01:27:50
are sort of normal from the ceiling until about, you know,
01:27:56
3/4 of the way down. And then they are, you can,
01:28:00
they're like, you can see the frame of the wall and then there
01:28:03
are like sandbags underneath the wall in the frame.
01:28:09
So it's kind of like this unfinishedness, I guess.
01:28:14
And you know this, you know that you kind of it's almost like
01:28:18
these these bags are the kind of bags of sand or something that
01:28:22
you might throw on the side of a river that's, you know, that's
01:28:27
overflowing. But they're so it's in it's in
01:28:32
quite an unique space in and of itself.
01:28:36
And then storage piece is this huge pallet filled with packaged
01:28:43
up pieces of her art and there's a rope around it.
01:28:48
And when I was there, which was great too, they were putting up
01:28:52
new works of art on the wall. So they had just as I walked
01:28:56
into the room, they were. I definitely need to visit
01:28:59
exhibitions with you, Emily. I love nothing was activated.
01:29:03
Nothing was, you know, displaced.
01:29:07
The artist wasn't there. Wasn't there, she sort of
01:29:10
consults with the museum staff about which ones to put up and
01:29:14
how to hang them and stuff like that.
01:29:15
So I, I assume that's what she was in the, in the gallery for.
01:29:20
It's kind of a very artfully packed palette, wouldn't you
01:29:25
say? I mean, it's sort of abnormally
01:29:28
high in a way, and it just shows you everything that she has had
01:29:33
to bring around with her as an artist who's been creating art
01:29:39
for 25 years. It really is quite something to
01:29:44
bring such perfect objects, like I was saying, like these
01:29:48
absolutely immaculately produced pieces of art.
01:29:52
And then to have that rubbish that, you know, I don't know, I,
01:29:57
I'm with you. I, it wasn't amazing.
01:29:59
I really want to come go back. And by the way, Emily, I want to
01:30:03
understand what I did. Did I touch the wrong sculpture?
01:30:08
Yes, you did, yes. And on that note, it's around.
01:30:13
He was. He was talking about the bell
01:30:16
curtain. He's.
01:30:18
Sorry how you're young. Absolutely done.
01:30:21
You know what can? You do.
01:30:22
Well, this is great. I mean, I have to say I knew
01:30:25
nothing about Hagu Yang before this exhibition, which not that
01:30:29
uncommon for me, but. Oh, I didn't know much, to be
01:30:32
very honest with you. Yeah, the guy at the gallery
01:30:35
that I was talking to was saying how, you know, she just isn't
01:30:39
that well known in the UK, you know, obviously much more so in
01:30:45
Berlin. But but yeah, what a treat.
01:30:48
What an absolute treat for the senses.
01:30:51
I mean, it felt like, it felt like, like her storage piece,
01:30:56
she was just reaching back in her cultural history and her own
01:31:00
memory and her own ideas and just just unfolding them and
01:31:05
presenting them in a way that one could relate to.
01:31:08
I mean, which I think is such a difficult thing to do, you know.
01:31:11
I mean, I felt, I felt like I could understand something about
01:31:16
what her experience was, this migrant experience and, you
01:31:22
know, relate that to my own, which is, you know, which is the
01:31:27
thing. But yeah, so it was brilliant.
01:31:29
So thank you. It was lovely chatting with you
01:31:30
about it. This was delightful.
01:31:32
And don't forget visit exhibitions because we visit
01:31:37
them so that you have to take care all.
01:31:41
Right. Brilliant.
01:31:42
Thanks everyone. Thanks, Rana.
01:31:43
Take care. Bye bye.


