Professor Nam Hwayeon’s Korean Pavilion in Venice Biennale Comes Home

Professor Nam Hwayeon at School of Visual Arts who participated in the Korean Pavilion for the 58th Venice Biennale last November presents her work back in Korea at the Arko Art Center from May 8th through June 11th. The Korean Pavilion from Venice last November was reproduced in a more spacious area this time.

Meanwhile, artists Jung Eun-Young and Jane Jin Kaisen also involved in this project. History Has Failed Us, but No Matter, the title, came from the opening sentence of Lee Min Jin’s novel Pachinko which gives a detailed portrait of the life of women as the subordinate subject in the modern 20th century. Curator Kim Hyun-Jin introduces the exhibition as “the modern history of outsiders, that is, women and sexual minorities.”

As Kim indicates, the exhibition seeks for the modernization history and today of Korea and East Asia through the lens of gender. It inquires into who narrates the history and whom this history excludes. It further explores what is visible when this history is critically viewed based on gender issues. The exhibition's emphasis on gender dynamics ultimately guides us to re-interpret and re-produce the existing history in a new light.

In this exhibition, professor Nam Hwayeon showcased her video work Dancer from the Peninsula (2019) on choreographer and dancer Choi Seung-Hee, a figure who lived the unprecedented life of a female artist in the colonial post-war era. Nam’s work portrays Choi’s struggle and flight as an artist from nationalism prevalent during the Cold War. This video is a fruit of professor Nam’s arduous research on this topic since 2012. In its format, the video is closer to commentary on the archive with choreographic rhythms rather than a usual documentary film.

The Arko Art Center takes pre-reservations through the Naver Booking service for this exhibition. The group reservations are not available for a social distancing measure. Also, a limited number of visitors are permitted to enter at a time, and the exhibition curation is only offered online. The exhibition is available online on Arko Art Center’s official Youtube channel since the 24th of April.