Group show in the cookhouse gallery

As a Korean, it is absurd that security should be guaranteed through negotiations between the U.S. and North Korea, not South and North Korea.

It is ironic that many Koreans are in a state where even safety and peace can be threatened by U.S. choices.

Also, many developing countries are threatened by the economic sanctions of the big powers, as well.

Since the Korean War, South Korea has received much support from the United States in many ways. This situation naturally made Korea a pro-U.S. nation, and my parents’ generation who experienced the Korean War is quite friendly toward the U.S. However, I think that the generation after the war has not experienced can only be quite negative about their attitude toward the United States. There are several reasons for this. First, the U.S. is demanding and paying a huge amount of defense spending from South Korea every year. The U.S. military is stationed in South Korea, and they say they protect us from North Korean threats, but they also create a dangerous situation because of the U.S. president’s political actions. Secondly, the U.S. has installed many equipment such as THAAD in South Korea to keep China in check. This situation has caused many difficulties in trade with China, and South Korea has suffered much economic damage. Finally, South Korea has no choice in improving relations with North Korea. There was a lot of negotiations between the three countries, but Korea always had to follow the U.S. decision.

I think it is true that South Korea has received a lot of support from the United States in the past, but I wonder how long we have to follow their choice. I also think this generation gap can lead to a split between parents and their children.

The whole world is still central to Western culture, they are still trying to control the world. 

However, without the sacrifice and labor of the Third World countries, could they have maintained their present mighty power?

I satirize their behavior with fan and flag made in China.

After the Cold War, the United States has imposed sanctions on many countries to maintain its economic dominance. Typical the U.S. and Iranian situations show that the U.S. imposes sanctions on Iran because it supports terrorist groups, but most people know it is because of oil. The U.S. defines the Middle East as the region of the wealthiest value, which is in fact related to oil. The situation in the U.S. and China, too, has economically cooperated with each other in many ways, but the U.S. presses China with tariffs to keep a fast-growing China in check. As a result, China also kept the U.S. in check, causing much damage to neighbouring countries in the two countries’ economic struggles.
In my point of view, I think the United States is trying to control many countries in order to maintain its economy. This has not changed significantly, with only different methods and methods of looting resources from colonial countries in the past. Human society no longer seems to be forming an ideological confrontation between communism and capitalism, but a new colony by the economy.

The group exhibition ; body by five Korean artists opens up a variety of discourses around human body.
​The participating artists, whose work covers diverse practices, investigate the social, spatial, and political possibilities of human body as a nucleus of the exhibition, and present their own artistic interpretation of body. 

Youngye Cho’s(b.1988) organic interpretation of body movement and dance motions is
materialised through her textile work, Silhouette(2019). Focusing on various forms of transformation through different viewpoints and shadows of object, she interprets the bodily movement based on the idea of ‘square’, and transforms the rhythmic images of the body into fibre art which features geometrical lines and shapes. 

A realistic representation of the human body is more apparent in Jaehyung Um’s (b.1990) painting series Solar Eclipse (2019) and Lunar Eclipse(2019), in which the organic materiality of human bodies makes a sharp contrast to the bright colours of the geometric landscape within the frame. Jeahyung explores the ideas that exist between memory and place through the temporal and seasonal movements of human bodies in relation to the experiences of travel and tourism. 

Sun-youl Kim (b.1983) has been expressing how individuals should respond to the uniformly changing social system under the economic logic of free markets through human figures. In Negotiation(2019), Sun-youl seeks to satirise the power structures constituted after the Cold War through the realistic bodies of figures. 

In Sora Park’s (b.1992) oxytocin (2019), the concept of body has extended into digital space.
Departing from the aesthetic trends of wearable design and lifestyle, she investigates how personal digital devices extend the concept of body, hold sway over how we feel and perceive, and change how we communicate.

Yongchan Lim re-interprets objects as sign and proposes the construction of new narratives around objects. In his sculpture Screenshot(2017), the body of a television with figurative criminal effects from the media explores the possibility of storytelling through an object. 

I had my first outside group exhibition in England, not in colleges. We had several meetings and tried to keep the formality. Although they are all Koreans, most of them have studied in other colleges or are doing. We could share a lot of things. Personally, I think it was a good experience to observe people’s reactions to my new works.

This work began on a piece of abandoned paper at my studio.

The paper was being recorded my footprint and rut of chair. Looking at this, I thought it was not just a piece of paper because it had my trace such as actions and times in studio. 

Through this, I started works that record the trace of people in various place. First, I chose Chelsea college, and I wanted to ask questions about their identity through the traces of students gathered here for different reasons in different countries around the world.

People in Third World countries, including myself, think about why they came to the former imperialist country of England, and also about the social system that made them here.

This work has developed out of an interest in postcolonialism. A native of Korea with colonial experience, I was inspired by a monument to the Commonwealth memorial gate in Hyde Park. In my artwork, the banana is symbol of people from colonized countries in the past, and “KEEP CALM and EAT BANANA” represent minorities such as homosexuality. The video which shows the change of process of a banana also expresses it about human life like the circle of nature. The banana is easy to buy and eat everywhere, but many people do not know about the banana’s background such as ‘banana massacre’. The public do not know that ‘How longtime workers work in the banana farm’, ‘How about the condition of their workplace’. I know sadly people are not interested in it. However, we can see that it is easy to find products which is similar banana. In regard to this, I believe that there are many sacrifices made for the conveniences which we enjoy. 

Relate to research – Banana Land: Blood, Bullets and Poison (Documentary)