Poster image of 《City and the People》 © SeMA

《City and the People》 is an exhibition examining the distinctive aspects of the people living here and now, and the social backgrounds they are based on. Focusing on our society’s collective experiences, such as “estranged labor” and increasing “social instability” which in turn create “excluded and marginalized existences,” the works in this exhibition demonstrate critical awareness of the social situation.

Selected primarily from SeMA’s permanent collection, the artworks have been interwoven together based on the socio-cultural codes we presently share instead of being categorized by time period, genre, and form. From these social codes that are familiar to us through film and literature, the viewers will be able to access the multilayered textures and substances of the works.


Installation view of 《City and the People》 © SeMA

The exhibition is organized into three sections. The first section examines the marginal beings on the boundaries of society that lead meaningless lives only to gratify their desires. Standing at the edge of globalized neoliberalism where anything can be done for the sake of profit, we voluntarily lend ourselves to slavery of capitalism for our own consumption (Eternal Slaves) and pursue our private desires over social introspection or critical awareness (Bodies Laden with Desire).

These collective experiences are reflected into codes of repetitive labor and selfish attitudes that have been vividly portrayed in a wide array of films and television dramas. The works included in this section visualize these issues by making a parody of meaningless repetitive actions, or revealing the invisible structures of consumer capitalism and those who are dominated by the objects of desire. In addition, this section of the exhibition also juxtaposes works that investigate the boundary objects that are structuralized as much as the humans under social conditions.
 
The second section of the exhibition explores marginal groups as sites where social instability and desire are unveiled. Minorities (Invisible People), who were often excluded and hidden from history, have been suppressed by the authority and the mainstream in order to consolidate the system. Nevertheless, minorities have never been forgotten and are constantly revived in our memories.

Young people (Convenience Store Human), with their livelihood showing no signs of improvement despite the struggles, project themselves onto the excluded characters in webtoons and novels, taking them on as their alter ego, while reconstructing the narrative as a way of breaking the ties. These works delve into moments when the familiar turns into the unfamiliar and react to their conditions by raising questions on social perceptions and standards.
 
Lastly, the works on display at the Project Gallery2 focus more on hopeful destruction. These works assert that we must acknowledge and overcome our own foolishness in order to break away from this state where we cannot be ourselves, that we should not label and restrict the underprivileged, and that it is essential for us to recover our sense of humanity.
 
The economic crisis, various calamities (such as nuclear disasters, earthquakes, and the nationwide spread of MERS), and terror incidents are increasingly becoming a part of our everyday anxieties and horrors. It may also be true that the Korean society has been trapped in stagnation and guilt for quite some time but it is clear that even in the present moment, the Korean people continue to search for hope by joining forces together. The works in this exhibition are those that have tried to catch these signs early on and interpret them. The exhibition and the artworks hope to provide an opportunity to recover our lost sense of direction and find ways to move forward.

References