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| Im Heung-soon stands in front of "Ghost Guide" at The Page Gallery in eastern Seoul. Courtesy of The Page Gallery |
By Kwon Mee-yoo
Artist Im Heung-soon pays attention to those who are marginalized. He is best known for winning the Silver Lion at the 2015 Venice Biennale for his video "Factory Complex," which looks into the life of female laborers in Korea as well as Vietnam and Cambodia.
Im goes by the title of artist-film director, blurring the line between fine art and film. While preparing for his solo exhibition, Im also released the documentary "Things That Do Us Part" in November. The documentary film is an extension project from Im's 2017 exhibition of the same name at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea.
Im's works are differentiated from typical documentaries as he collects individual narratives neglected in the course of history and reconstructs them by interweaving metaphorical and symbolic footage.
The artist shifted his interest to the people who had suffered tragic events in modern history and are still processing those events. That is the impetus of his new solo exhibition "Ghost Guide," currently displaying at The Page Gallery in Seongsu-dong, eastern Seoul.
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| Installation view of Im Heung-soon's solo exhibition "Ghost Guide" at The Page Gallery in Seoul / Courtesy of The Page Gallery |
Visitors entering the exhibition will be greeted with the shape of a ghost, made with a broom and a blanket. It is part of "Dear Earth," which consists of the ghost sculpture as well as stones collected from historical sites in Korea and Argentina, both having suffered massacres under military dictatorship.
When the artist visited Argentina two years ago, he learned of "Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo," whose children had "disappeared" during the military dictatorship and their ongoing campaign for justice that includes gathering together every Thursday for over 40 years.
"It naturally overlapped with the Gwangju Uprising and I visited the May Mothers in Gwangju to create something to console their shared sorrow and pain," Im explained.
A stone and building that remain of the former 505 Security Unit site in Gwangju is displayed next to the remains from ESMA, a former Naval Academy site in Buenos Aires, which was used as an illegal detention center during the 1976-83 Argentinean military dictatorship era also known as "the Dirty War" or "the Epoch of the Disappeared."
"I increasingly feel that it is important to remember and document the unseen. This exhibition is to remember the two cities that suffered tragedies and the times of the people who live in the two cities," Im said.
The artist took inspiration from the similarities between the two cities. Both in Buenos Aires and Gwangju, citizens were massacred under military regimes. Many people died or disappeared and the aftermath of the massacre still leaves a deep scar on the cities and their peoples.
Other elements of "Dear Earth" include photographs of Gwangju, Buenos Aires and Jeju Island and a virtual reality (VR) video.
The exhibit was named "Ghost Guide" as the artist hopes to mourn for and console those who have become ghosts by mass murder and their surviving family members' ghostlike life. A namesake artwork brings youngsters of Gwangju and Buenos Aires together, participating in a workshop to recreate their mothers' activities in their respective historical events.
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| A scene from Im Heung-soon's "Good Light, Good Air" / Courtesy of the artist and The Page Gallery |
The two-channel video "Good Light, Good Air" is installed in a way that the Gwangju video and the Buenos Aires video are facing each other. The title of the work comes from the names of the two cities ― Gwangju originally meaning "good light" and Buenos Aires meaning "good air."
Premiered last year during the 2018 Carnegie International at the Carnegie Museum of Art, the 42-minute video explores life after the poignant historical events in Korea and Argentina in a rather calm way.
Im interviewed witnesses who were abducted and imprisoned in secret camps, family members of the missing ones and forensic anthropologists working for human right victims in Buenos Aires and the citizens who witnessed the Gwangju Uprising and lost their family members during the massacre in Korea.
In the video, an Argentinian forensic doctor who investigates unidentified bodies said the disappearance is like a pebble in a shoe, making the remaining family members live in uncertainty. Their identification of a body is bad news to the family, but it also helps them to close a chapter in their life and move on.
Im's works pays tribute to the victims of history in an artistic way.
The exhibit runs until Jan. 23.
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