Installation view of 《Whispers of the Unsettling》 © Space Willing N Dealing

This exhibition creates a space rich in the texture and colors of soft, delicate images centered on the individual narratives of two women artists, as if viewers were surrounded by a fairy-tale landscape. Through images that amplify the fantastic or psychological tension distinctive to the two artists, while at times appearing cruel, viewers will be able to fully experience a strange atmosphere.

Kwon Soonyoung has portrayed the realities experienced by women and children as vulnerable beings through delicate emotional lines and allegorical resonance, as seen in series such as ‘Sorrowful Breast Milk’ and ‘Christmas of Orphans.’

In this exhibition as well, the images she presents may appear as beautiful and fantastical still lifes or happy-looking landscapes, but upon closer inspection, one can see that dark emotions felt through personal childhood experiences and events, as well as the cruelty occurring in this world, are revealed as narratives through aesthetic symbolism.

Lee Mijung likewise extracts the subjects of her work from everyday life that begins from personal experience and situations. Taking as her material the busy movements of daily life and the things that happen within the space of the home, the artist presents works that visualize housework, often called “shadow labor,” through her distinctive sculptural expression.

The artist says that she expresses the reality in which household labor such as cleaning, washing dishes, and cooking is not recognized for its value and is not converted into capital, through images formed from the effects of shadow and light that create black silhouettes.

This recalls, as if in a scene from a Disney animation where a magician appears, that an environment that seems to have been created by itself is in fact a reality accompanied by intense labor.
.
The exhibition format Lee Mijung has pursued as a staged space changes in this exhibition into a way of revealing figures and stories. This differs from the way viewers were previously invited to enter the spaces staged by Lee Mijung as protagonists themselves.

In other words, while focusing more on her own story, she presents a composition centered on the movement of figures, expanding from the environment of the home, which she has treated as a steady interest, and this time becoming a portrait of the “house person,” as named by the artist.

In this way, the arrangement of figures, marked by soft curves reminiscent of movement in Lee Mijung’s animations, connects the entire exhibition space, while Kwon Soonyoung’s images revealed between them show themselves as narratives that are deeply personal and yet reflect this world.

References