Exhibition poster © Post Territory Ujeongguk

All participants in the exhibition—two poets, three visual artists, a curator, and a designer—were born in the 1990s. Those born in this decade are labeled through society and media as the “Millennial generation,” “Generation Z,” or “MZ generation.” Under these labels, our generation is categorized as digitally fluent, value-driven, and prioritizing individual happiness.

《The Squid Chooses Its Own Ink》 begins with the question of whether it is truly possible to classify individuals into a collective through generational labels. The exhibition title is borrowed from a short story by novelist Adolfo Bioy Casares, serving as a metaphor for those who seek to speak from within their own worlds rather than conforming to socially standardized generations. A squid’s ink may be an inherent and defining trait, but assigning meaning to that ink is a matter of individual choice.

Rather than remaining buried beneath a monolithic concept of generation, 《The Squid Chooses Its Own Ink》 proposes choosing one’s own generation—even if that choice results in stains and inconsistencies.

The exhibition unfolds across a terrace and three rooms. The room near the entrance presents works by Park Ji-il and Dahoon Nam: a poetic series recording one month in diary form, and an installation of desks positioned across two temporal points—2007 and 2022. Opposite this space are two additional rooms.

One room presents poetry and sculpture by Lee Jaeket alongside paintings by Kim Min-jo, woven together through seven months of exchange via email. The other room features a collaboration between Park Mi-jeong and Lee Jaeket, with Park presenting installations composed of flat works and handrail-like structures, accompanied by sound recordings of Lee Jaeket’s voice derived from these works.

The artists’ collaborations represent encounters between heterogeneous worlds, where differing qualities and colors fuse into distinct forms of allure. This is an eruption by those who have chosen their own ink, transcending an era that defines generations as collectives rather than individuals.

Railings by Dahoon Nam, Kim Min-jo, and Park Mi-jeong appear throughout the exhibition space in varying forms. Despite their differences, these installations share the same terrain of the exhibition space, embodying the irony of being recognized as railings.

《The Squid Chooses Its Own Ink》 ultimately proposes that, rather than being submerged under a grand, generation-wide concept, one might choose the generation to which one belongs—and will belong—even if that choice leaves stains behind.

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