A city is defined as a specific region with a large population that serves as a political, economic and cultural center. However, it is not only humans that inhabit a city. A city is home to buildings that highly, widely and deeply occupy the city’s above and underground, a wide range of fauna including microorganisms, insects, occasionally spotted feathered animals and wild animals more largely populated than humans as well as countless numbers of flora like weeds on stone walls, flower trees in vegetable gardens to roadside trees standing in a row.

Moonjung Hwang’s 《Non-Affection for the City》 highlights the nonhuman elements of a city. Humans disappear without a trace whereas only garments remain to flutter like a ghost in the revolving door. Parts of apartments, diagonally lying street lights, exposed bricks on a wall, glasses used as an outer wall for a building…All of these mineral elements are reproduced as fabrics for display. A boxwood tree often used as a garden tree is also reproduced in the same way and hung on one side of the exhibition hall as a floristic element of a city. Here, the 《Non-Affection for the City》, is a place which lacks the existence of humans as the nonhuman (minerals, fauna and flora) elements try to reclaim the sovereignty of a city.

Hwang has always been interested in the nonhuman side to a city. The artist illustrates unique ways of how plants live in the city in The Way Three Trees Live Together (2016). In Plant Voyage (2016) Hwang sends off a plant on a boat and tends a small garden stuck to a wall in Camouflage, Intervention, Assimilation (2016). Moreover, she makes stairs for squirrels in the park to climb easily in Squirrel Stairs (2015) and operates a lift designed to carry food to the birds nestled high in a tree in Feeding Fresh Food (2015).

Meanwhile, in Beyond between Beyond (2014), stones in a city and a wall built out of them obtain a special status. Hwang creates a virtual wall with brick and cement and lets a narrative to flow from behind, putting together pieces of history of the city. Stones and walls, created before us but shall outlive us, are mysterious archives designed to preserve and deliver the historical unconsciousness of a city. As such, the artist has explored the unique existence of nonhuman elements such as fauna, flora, minerals that constitute a city.

In this context, miniaturist impressions held by the works of Hwang deserve an attention. At times, the artist’s works look like a version of a physical being or object reduced to a specific proportion. That is why, at times, they look like a toy or a diorama. However, such illusion comes along because we unconsciously look at objects from a human scale. Stairs, which seem like a weird-looking miniature model to us humans, may offer extreme convenience for climbing up and down from a squirrel’s perspective; a small toy boat for us may be ample enough for a plant to travel on.

When showcasing a work with a focus on human beings, Hwang tried to most carefully identify a specific and individual scale, a not a general scale. Finger Fitness (2016), a largely reduced version of sports equipment from a fitness club was created in an adequate size for Uljiro residents who may have tired fingers after long hours of labor. The same applies to Camouflage, Intervention, Assimilation (2016)’s vegetable garden, which from a general perspective may be a “mini farm” but is indeed an adequately-sized farmland for the artist to grow whatever is needed. Consequently, in terms of a relative scale -the nonhuman scale-, all of Moonjung Hwang’s works are in real “life sizes” in each and every way.

Such is the case for installations in this exhibition. From the boxwood tree, glass outer wall, street lights to even apartments…. All models are 1:1 replicas. However, if the models seem rather smaller than the actual life size, probably it's because Hwang made them out of fabric, making them seem less solid, just like a deflated balloon. Whether they would end up being inflated and hold great dignity or shrink and sprawl out like an abandoned skin… we don’t know which direction the air will take. Whether this place is new construction or one to be demolished… we don’t know which direction the city will take.

Whether citizens will move in here or be evicted… we don’t know which direction the people will take. This uncertainty could have been the very destiny of the city. A new construction and demolition, moving in and out from a city is not an “all or nothing” event, but an event taking place “all at once, everywhere.” However, when such event increases in frequency and intensity, the stones and walls lose the power to keep and transmit history and memories of that place.

Accordingly, the nonhuman elements of a powerless city are reproduced by fragile fabrics to exude a rather burned out and transient image. There is no place for humans in a city with no accumulated history and memory. Time is trapped in a revolving door and the present cannot go on because of the past. Countless number of presents dissipates like grains of sand.

Perspectives seen from fauna, flora, and minerals attempted by Hwang also take the direction towards the actual building which holds the exhibition. The artist places life-size replicas, modelled after a building’s pillar and inflated with a fabric, among the original pillars and takes samples of the minerals used as construction materials and the flowerbed plants used to landscape the building’s surroundings, as if she had peeled off the building and revealed of its bare skin. As such, the artist replicates, extracts and visualizes the nonhuman elements constituting a city.

The landscape of 《Non-Affection for the City》 is not a landscape of humans but that of minerals, animals and plants. This is not to simply oppose the human vs. nonhuman or encourage denying what is human. Rather, it is seen as the artist’s attempt to redefine the human-nonhuman relationship in an equivocal manner, unlike the modernist humanism which called for mankind’s superiority over nature and environment. Here, the modernistic dichotomies including nature/culture, human/animal, and human/machine will be subject to review again.

In summary, the works of Hwang hold a post-human attitude trying to overcome the dichotomy-based hierarchy of human versus nonhuman. However, if the existing post-humanism emerged from the technological and bioengineering breakthroughs, the post-human sentiments of Hwang are somewhat similar, yet stand out in two ways. First, Hwang’s works function regardless of scientific breakthroughs or feats. The artist references old tools or techniques such as staircases, ladder and slingshots to explore post-human possibilities.

The human-plant hybrid sought by the artist is not related with modern genetic engineering, since it involves wearing a “plant mask” combining an air-purifying plant with a gas mask. Such low-tech sensibility of the artist illustrates that the post-human agenda can be largely applied to our daily practice. Second, a unique sense of humor can be found in Hwang’s works. Finger Fitness (2016) or Plant Mask (2017) arouses a grin which is close to a smirk.

In this exhibition alike, garments that hover around the same spot, like a peeled-off skin placed among the seemingly sullen or gloomy apartments, street lights, or building pillars make it hard not to smirk. On one side of a wall inside the exhibition hall, can be found a hole, which seems torn apart. Maybe it is a trace created from that smile, smirk. Or maybe it is a trace left by a handful of “affection” which remains hidden in the 《Non-Affection for the City》.

References

• [비평] 도시의 주권자
  [Critique] Sovereign of a City