Installation view of 《Generation Environment Future》 © Kyungpook National University Art Museum

In an era when unprecedented extreme weather events, the worst heat waves, and record-breaking rainfall in the shortest periods continue to make headlines, Kyungpook National University Art Museum will hold 《The Sea Named Us》 from July 16 to October 31, an exhibition that encourages climate action based on sustainable coexistence.

Artist Byun Kaka studied installation and media at the Berlin University of the Arts. While working at a Japanese restaurant during her studies abroad, she encountered food on a conveyor belt and began thinking about ecological cycles, life, and death, which she presented in the work Modular(2023). In this exhibition, she newly presents Post Modular-Diaspora(2024), an expanded version of ‘Modular’.

This work was created through a nine-week collaboration between artist Byun Kaka and eight students majoring in Landscape Architecture at Kyungpook National University. Based on the theme that regarding artificial objects and nature as separate accelerates the climate crisis, the work raises questions about how the two elements of nature and the artificial can coexist.

Alongside this, visitors can encounter video, photography, installation, and citizen-participatory works by seven artists, including Sangbin Im’s Antarctica-Boat, which expresses human aestheticism through traces of humans discovered in the majestic Antarctic, and Jung Jaeyeop’s The Boundary of Contact, made by reprocessing wood discarded after exhibitions at the museum.

The exhibition is open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., except on Sundays and public holidays. Admission is free.

Education and experience programs connected to the exhibition have also been prepared. “Little Captain’s Navigation,” an intergenerational program held in collaboration with Kyungpook National University’s Community Contribution Center, is a program in which juniors(ages 9–12), university students(intergenerational supporters), and seniors(age 50 and older) view the exhibition together, receive docent training, and then produce an audio guide.

It will be held eight times over four weeks on Fridays and Saturdays starting July 26. “Forest: Site,” a community recovery program for local housing-vulnerable groups, will run every Tuesday from September 3 to October 15 at Kyungpook National University’s Daegu Academic Forest, offering forest experiences and disposable film camera activities.

Cho Chulhee, Director of Kyungpook National University Art Museum, said, “Art cannot solve climate change, but I believe it can question the ‘future’ that the ‘environment’ created by the ‘present generation’ will change, and gather various agendas. Based on this, I hope the museum can become a forum for discussion so that climate change does not move into crisis, and furthermore, I hope it becomes an opportunity for visitors to explore the value of action.”

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