Sanghee Song, Byeongangsoe-ga 2015, 2015 © Sanghee Song

Art Space Pool is holding Sanghee Song’s solo exhibition 《The Story of Byeongangsoe 2015: In Search of the Others》 from November 12 to December 13. The artist has long worked to excavate and bring to light traces of human barbarity that have been marginalized and pushed to the edges of history. In this exhibition, she connects these traces with Byeongangsoe-ga, a Korean pansori-based novel full of raw vulgarity and tragedy.

The video installation The Story of Byeongangsoe 2015: In Search of the Others continuously presents images of figures abstractly summarized in history, such as colonial subjects, prisoners of war, victims of massacres and disasters, and comfort women. Amidst the rapid flow of images accompanied by music from György Ligeti and Olivier Messiaen, hand-drawn portraits by the artist drift across the screen. Through these images, the artist performs a visual ritual of calling forth and invoking those who have vanished without even leaving behind names, traveling to sites of mass civilian killings such as caves and sugarcane fields in Okinawa.

In addition, the work incorporates grotesque and eerie texts drawn from various literary sources, including the pansori novel Byeongangsoe-ga, Choi In-hoon's The Grey Man, and Kenji Miyazawa's The Restaurant of Many Orders.

Art Space Pool stated, “This is a rare exhibition that does not speak in euphemisms. Through the raw texts filled with vulgarity, tragedy, and fantasy, Sanghee Song seeks to prevent the forgetting of those marginalized in history, connecting their sorrows with these vivid narratives.”

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