“Heavy-Duty” Poster Image ©CR CollectiveCR Collective presents Nayoung Kang’s solo exhibition “Heavy-Duty” on view through May 29.
The exhibition “Heavy-Duty” is about the special labor that trains the ordinary, the events that take place in special spaces. The artist transformed the interior of the exhibition hall into a space that reveals the relationship between care providers and recipients through everyday spatial experiences, remembered lifestyles, and assistive devices.
Caregiving, especially within the family, is an anti-capital and unproductive labor. The situation where the burden of heavy duties imposed can only be borne within the confines of the family can only be interpreted as a matter of strong family bonds and ethics involving sacrifice. By taking the form of examining the special life of caregiving, rather than the ordinary life of caregiving, the artist aims to remind us that the issue of caregiving has not yet become a social and political issue and has not yet been transformed into a universal issue of care in our society.
Within the exhibition, viewers may question how gestures of care can become art, and how they are represented as secretive acts. The artist explores under what social and structural circumstances the responsibilities and burdens imposed to care for imperfect bodies are generated and whether they can be textualized as a visual language in a contemporary context.
