“Nho Wonhee: You were there” Installation view at ARKO Art Center ©ARKO Art Center
From August 11 to November 19, ARKO Art Center will present Nho Wonhee: You were there, an exhibition focusing on the artist Noh Wonhee (b. 1948). Noh was a Minjung Art (People’s Art) artist in the 1980s and a founding member of Reality and Utterance. She captured the problems of her time and society in her works and critically addressed the point at which they intruded into the private spaces.
In this exhibition, you can see new works that reflect the artist’s perspective on industrial accidents. In (2023), the shadowy figures of victims of several recent industrial accidents are painted. Above them, the victims’ testimonies are written on white squares of fabric that resemble post-it notes. There are also works that reveal the artist’s interest in women’s issues in society. In < Old Household Goods 2> (2019) and < Taking Up a Weapon> (2018), the tools used in domestic work are brought to the fore, resisting the dismissal of women’s labor. The exhibition also includes archives of the artist’s activities and thoughts, as well as illustrations for Hwang Sok-young’s novel serialized in the newspaper Princess Bari (2007.01.03-06.20).
In this way, the artist’s voice can be heard in the exhibition for those who are excluded and invisible in society.
