우리, 할머니 grandmothers

전시소개 OVERVIEW    |    기획의도 CURATORIAL STATEMENT    |    참여작가 ARTISTS    |    전시전경 INSTALLATION VIEW    |    아카이브 ARCHIVES

▣ Very Public Curatorial Statement People these days tend to objectify and generalize others and impose strict moral standards. However, in a close look, we are all in a “relationship with each other.” Grandmothers aims to evoke a relationship that transcends diverse gender and age and to create a space for understanding each other by inviting grandmothers. Grandmothers have a special meaning to the “Generation MZ (Millennial Generation + Generation Z).” The Generation MZ, whose parents are mostly Generation X dual-income is often raised by grandmothers. Thus, grandmothers are drawing attention as pioneers and personas who have nurtured and led the generation. grandmothers intersects the individual history and the history of the times of grandmothers, illuminating the diverse facets. In an abstract sense, grandmothers exist as icons of tolerance and sacrifice dedicated to their family, providing warmth by caring for their children and grandchildren. Representation in which children who visit their grandmother’s home gain weight or run away to the grandmother’s home after fighting with their parents exist in common all over the countries. On the other hand, the grandmothers also symbolize the stubborn women who protect the system. In particular, in Korea, which has gone through a turbulent era with shifts of Confucianism - Japanese Colonialism – Cold War - Rapid Modernization - Neoliberalism, the generational gap is quite clear, and in many cases, grandmothers defend old-fashioned values based on their own lives and experiences. No matter what kind of grandmother is, she is a very solid woman who must have been someone's daughter, sister, mother, wife, and herself who has gone through a period of upheaval. In her wrinkles, not only kindness and stubbornness, but also the years are piled up one after another. So, looking back on our grandmothers’ lives and preparing time together will allow us to reinterpret the present (past) through the past (present) and establish a new solidarity. On the other hand, grandmothers’ figures have been erased or omitted from many public historical records. Or, they have been repeatedly reproduced as fixed images or representations that have been distorted or reduced with some kind of value judgments. From the March 1st Movement to the April Revolution, the Gwangju Uprising, and the Jeju Uprising, numerous movements were held in Korea to chase freedom against domination or dictatorship. However, it is difficult to find records of women who died during the movements and only the names of most men are remaining. In addition, the names of numerous women who provided livelihoods and led economic activities in the ruins of war or dictatorship in the absence of men are often omitted under the family system. Society has placed women in a specific context and removed the other narratives, limiting them to only play a role that evokes collective emotions. However, the women who have the history intact, even including that role, remained right next to us under the name of “grandmothers”. grandmothers recalls the lives of our grandmothers. It examines how they have remembered and recorded the times, and reconstructs ordinary lives of them. By weaving their personal histories with the works of the artists that connect the past and the present of the grandmothers, the hidden history is revealed and diversified. The exhibition is largely composed of three nodes; ‘grandma’s diary’, ‘grandma in the ages’, and ‘becoming grandma’, which intersect conceptually and spatially rather than solid sections. In ‘grandma’s diary’, Suki Seokyeong Kang, Mostafa Saifi Rahmouni, and Oh Suk Kuhn portray various aspects of ordinary grandmothers. Kang composes Grandmother Tower #1, Circled Stair, and Narrow Meadow #19-08 as if they are talking together as grandmothers and grandchildren. Rahmouni memorizes his grandmother's existence with the sound of her cough in Persistence. Oh invites grandmothers and their grandchildren to the temporary studio. face to face workshop suggests conversation through camera between them. Therefore, ‘grandma’s diary’ aims to be a common diary co-written by grandmothers and grandchildren. In ‘grandma in the ages’, Yun Suknam, Joyce Wieland, Jinhyun Cha, and siren eun young jung present grandmothers’ experiences in each era from the historical and personal level, and try to rewrite their histories based on the erased history. In Yun's Women of Resistance, female independence activists appear alone, with their families, and with society, revealing the personal history and identities of women who have been forgotten in history. In Solidarity, Wieland, who documented the women’s labor movements, yields the subject’s seat to the audience by not showing specifi portraits of the women. The phrase “Solidarity”, which is continuously positioned in the middle of the screen, meets the purpose of the exhibition. Cha’s The Portraits of 108 series, a documentation of Korean comfort women, reproduces and reminds us of the history that has been avoided because it is difficult to deal with. In Wrong Indexing, jung arranges the archives with the raw materials of Yeoseong Gukgeuk and her own works together. The women shown in ‘grandma in the ages’ were not grandmothers at the time of their activities, but are now grandmothers. By sharing the experiences of modern and contemporary history that grandmothers have endured, the audience could recall the past into the present, the present into the past, and juxtapose the grandmothers of the era and their grandmothers, or themselves and their grandmothers together. In ‘becoming grandma’, Tchelet Pearl Weisstub and Samantha Nye present the works that expand the universal concept of grandmothers’ identity by putting rifts in it. In Hawaii - Escaping the Inevitable - Seoul, with the fantasy vacation and aging of the body as metaphors, Weisstub connects the older and younger generations, the past and the future. In her Visual Pleasure/Jukebox Cinema, Nye explores fantasy queer histories of diverse age and race, and envisions trans-inclusive lesbian spaces assembling a cast of women and non-binary people, including her mother, grandmother, their life-long friends, and elders from the queer community. The two artists raise questions about what defines our grandmothers, and return that identity to each of them. Aging is unavoidable, so generations exist. Everyone has grandmothers and grandfathers, and everyone will be a grandmother or grandfather. The exhibition grandmothers connects different generations and imagines a new solidarity by sharing experiences of diverse generations. If the exhibition reminds audiences of their own grandmothers, grandmothers has fulfilled its role. Text: Sun A Moon