The Busan Museum of Contemporary Art announced that it will present 《Outreach Art Projects #1–6: Seeing with Ten Fingers》 from May to October, joining international efforts to embrace diversity and promote inclusion.
In the 21st century, as populations continue to age, a growing social consensus has emerged around the need to create environments where people with diverse physical conditions, including people with disabilities, older adults, young children, and pregnant women, can live fulfilling lives.
Efforts to embrace diversity and achieve equality are actively being pursued by both public institutions and private companies under various initiatives, including Universal Design for all, barrier-free environments that eliminate obstacles for people with disabilities, and improved accessibility to information and communication technologies (ICT).
This project was conceived to contribute to meaningful social change and to fulfill more actively the evolving public role of contemporary art museums.
Based on the active participation of artists, public institutions, and citizens, the project is an integrated arts initiative that explores major social issues through artistic activities, fostering creation, exchange, and knowledge sharing while encouraging participants to take an active role in shaping discourse.
Under the theme of "Expanding Accessibility Through Bodily Senses," the project seeks to extend the museum's traditionally visual-centered activities to encompass a wider range of senses, including hearing, touch, and smell. By facilitating encounters among people with diverse physical abilities and creating opportunities to understand one another's existence and perspectives on the world, the project aims to inspire new insights and creativity.
Through October, the Busan Museum of Contemporary Art plans to carry out six art projects that encourage active participation among institutions, communities, and citizens, exploring ways to improve accessibility by expanding sensory experiences.
Artists from diverse artistic backgrounds, including Cho Youngjoo, Hong Bomi, Oum Jeongsoon, Kim Eunseol, SEOM:, and Doki Kim, have developed innovative and distinctive art programs designed to encourage participation regardless of disability and provide experiences that everyone can enjoy.
The first project to launch in May, Imperfect Eyes, New Eyes, invites participants to explore the broad spectrum of visual impairment through eyeglass-making activities. Held at the Busan Museum of Contemporary Art, the program combines lectures and creative workshops that transform experiences of discomfort into aesthetic encounters.
Beginning in June, visitors can participate in Hong Bomi's Far Yet Near, Near Yet Far. The project involves visiting the Busan School for the Blind and organizing a journey that invites students with visual impairments, who may seem particularly distant from the world of visual art, into the museum.
Next, Cho Youngjoo's Everyone a Caregiver, Everyone a Care Recipient, taking place from July to August, involves visiting care facilities throughout Busan to teach rehabilitation-based performance activities. The instructors, consisting of choreographers and performing artists with and without disabilities from Busan, will share the work taught by Cho with local communities, reminding participants of the value of care that is gradually fading amid increasing individualism.
In Kim Eunseol's Hands Meeting Hands: Horizontal Senses, held from August to September, participants will collaboratively create a glue-thread installation at the Busan Museum of Contemporary Art and the Seokdang Museum of Art at Dong-A University. The project reflects the artist's experience of transforming communication methods constrained by hearing impairment into artistic expression.
The sound artist duo SEOM: will present Seeing, Reading, and Imagining Sound in July and September at the Busan Museum of Contemporary Art and various locations throughout downtown Busan. By exchanging visual and auditory information, the project explores the commonalities that emerge despite the distinct characteristics of different senses.
Finally, contemporary artist Doki Kim, who explores existence and the world through immaterial media, will present Warmth, Heat, Melting at the Seokdang Museum of Art at Dong-A University from September to October. The project investigates warmth as one of humanity's most fundamental sensations, inviting participants to recall and share their personal memories and experiences associated with warmth.
The project's ultimate goal is to create a barrier-free museum environment that everyone can enjoy, with plans to develop the initiative into a barrier-free exhibition in 2025.
《Outreach Art Projects #1–6: Seeing with Ten Fingers》 distinguishes itself from one-off projects by conducting six long-term artistic initiatives that explore physical accessibility both inside and outside the museum. Through interactions with various institutions and citizens, the project will present its outcomes in an outreach exhibition.
Beyond this, the interactions generated through the projects will be brought back into the museum and developed into the barrier-free special exhibition 《Seeing with Ten Fingers》 in 2025.
Kang Seung-wan, Director of the Busan Museum of Contemporary Art, stated, "《Outreach Art Projects》 will provide an opportunity to broaden our understanding of diversity and accessibility, concepts that have previously been perceived within limited frameworks. We expect the project to fulfill the social and public responsibilities entrusted to contemporary art museums."
Visitors can participate in the projects through advance online reservations on the museum's official website or by attending on-site programs. Further details about the exhibition are available on the museum's website or by telephone inquiry.
