December 27, 2011 |
It was with her Korean Pavilion for the 2009 Venice Biennale. The installation of hanging, fluttering blinds, Series of Vulnerable Arrangements – Voice and Wind, was a work of ephemeral beauty: a kind of floating city in rainbow hues that elegantly suggested both the private sphere of the home and a general state of flux in a fast-paced urban world. She made her UK debut this summer with Teacher of Dance, a solo show in Oxford, representing the full spectrum of her sculpture, film and photography, exploring globalisation with formal beauty and an emotional undertow. This was swiftly followed by The Sea Wall, an exhibition pairing her lesser-known output with that of the late, great Romantic conceptualist Felix Gonzalez-Torres.
Have your experiences as an artist, travelling the world, and moving from Seoul to Berlin informed your work?
“Well, I never intended to live this kind of life. It just happened. I don’t think my floating circumstances are different from anyone else’s, multitasking and moving constantly between different cultures. It’s comforting to think I am not an exception of our time. And I’m optimistic – the melancholy from the constant short, ungrounded encounters might bring us to a unique appreciation and sentiment. I feel at home in Berlin because of my work, while the mountains in Korea are the best neighbours.”
The domestic world is important for you, too. For instance, Non-Indépliables (Non-Unfoldables) (2006-10), is a sculpture that uses a clothes drying rack, wrapped in fabric so that it looks like a person or a plane – a figure with wings.
“I believe we can neither protect the so-called private and local, nor can we open ourselves up as globalisation requires. When I look at my own household, it is as much a part of life as my ‘work’ and it’s full of significance. The first time I made work with drying racks was in 2006. I brought one into an abandoned house as a sign of ‘life’ for the project, Sadong 30, in Incheon, in South Korea. The rack was transformed into a figure inhabiting the house, wrapped with fabric and frozen into a fixed form.”
Your Venetian-blind installations are what you’re best known for. What were the ideas behind your latest commission in your Oxford solo show, Escaping Transparency?
“Semi-transparency has been Venetian blinds’ most interesting material quality for me. It’s demanding in that it can be difficult to control, with blinds hanging close to the ceiling. I guess that I had an urgency to articulate this. Escaping Transparency inevitably draws our attention to the ceiling, our eyes are fixed high up and we walk around without knowing or controlling the circumstances on the ground.”
You’ve just shown your work alongside that of Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Is he a hero of yours?
“Yes, for a long time I’ve had a deep appreciation of the poetical and political in his work.”
Escaping Transparency,
by Skye Sherwin
