Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts

Curatorial Statement

The mechanism of memory is initiated by the visual system’s recognition of objects and spaces, and each of these visually perceived imprints is stored in the brain’s neurons. When a fraction of recognition is retrieved, the hippocampus assembles the imprints into one single experience as a temporary web we call memory.

In this post-memory era, the retrospective of an event once it is over is more than the mere retrieval of certain recollections from a well-organized filing cabinet or the use of these otherwise untouched records as the materials of that event. Rather, the memory of an event is formed through a process of collective meditation in which individuals continuously reproduce their own versions of memories with all sorts of extraction, metaphor, and sentiment towards what happened. When such sentimental imprints are constantly retrieved for various purposes, the web of that memory becomes ever more strengthened through that process of self-examination.

However, the stability of memory is also vulnerable to the mind’s penetrable qualities. Memory, as a private version of reality that can be easily influenced by fantasy or dream, can sometimes fabricate a somewhat fictional experience while it might also present impersonal, fragmented, or incomprehensible incidents at other times. By regulating the imprints of scene, space, and sentiment, Chan Sook Choi, Hwa Yeon Park, and Hyewon Keum rearrange the narratives, the witnesses, and the auras of their memoirs, revealing the dynamic constitution of memories. They actively investigate the process of collective memory formation around social events and how fragments of memories are bio-politically engraved for every individual. Yen-Yen Ho and Jui-Chien Hsu, on the other hand, work to remove the symbols of events and retain only the ambiguities of metaphor, diffusing the fragments into indistinct backgrounds and focusing instead on the depiction of the visuals and perceptions of daily life. Such an approach impairs the bind of collective memory and its accompanying commitment to action, and yet it creates a broader sense of memory and expands an individual’s freedom to memorize an event. (Written by Suhan Liao)

Curatorial Statement

The mechanism of memory is initiated by the visual system’s recognition of objects and spaces, and each of these visually perceived imprints is stored in the brain’s neurons. When a fraction of recognition is retrieved, the hippocampus assembles the imprints into one single experience as a temporary web we call memory.

In this post-memory era, the retrospective of an event once it is over is more than the mere retrieval of certain recollections from a well-organized filing cabinet or the use of these otherwise untouched records as the materials of that event. Rather, the memory of an event is formed through a process of collective meditation in which individuals continuously reproduce their own versions of memories with all sorts of extraction, metaphor, and sentiment towards what happened. When such sentimental imprints are constantly retrieved for various purposes, the web of that memory becomes ever more strengthened through that process of self-examination.

However, the stability of memory is also vulnerable to the mind’s penetrable qualities. Memory, as a private version of reality that can be easily influenced by fantasy or dream, can sometimes fabricate a somewhat fictional experience while it might also present impersonal, fragmented, or incomprehensible incidents at other times. By regulating the imprints of scene, space, and sentiment, Chan Sook Choi, Hwa Yeon Park, and Hyewon Keum rearrange the narratives, the witnesses, and the auras of their memoirs, revealing the dynamic constitution of memories. They actively investigate the process of collective memory formation around social events and how fragments of memories are bio-politically engraved for every individual. Yen-Yen Ho and Jui-Chien Hsu, on the other hand, work to remove the symbols of events and retain only the ambiguities of metaphor, diffusing the fragments into indistinct backgrounds and focusing instead on the depiction of the visuals and perceptions of daily life. Such an approach impairs the bind of collective memory and its accompanying commitment to action, and yet it creates a broader sense of memory and expands an individual’s freedom to memorize an event. (Written by Suhan Liao)

For South Korea and Taiwan, the 20th century bore the multiple realities of colonial suppression, national and state-sanctioned violence, and against which the much-desired attainment of democracy. These realities are continuously contested between past and current generations when reflecting on the embodiment of their memory. Events such as the Cold War, and 5∙18 are commemorated for their historical significance, yet their cultural impact diminishes as each generation passes. The growing dissonance and resulting indifference of the general public can perhaps be attributed to a lack of proper dialogue and negotiation between generations between the past and present, and, as a result, contemporary generations from South Korea and Taiwan often imagine alternative representations as an appropriate response to the exclusion and alienation that they feel. By casting a wider net, we are able to weave silenced and peripheral narratives of historical world events into our understanding.

Through the works of Chan Sook Choi, Hwa Yeon Park, Yen-Yen Ho, Hyewon Keum, and Jui-Chien Hsu, Nets of Fragmented Memories offers a paralleling voice for remembering history. Through the re-collection and re-assemblage of the collective memories of South Korean and Taiwanese civilians who were victims of political turmoil, the pieces in this exhibition explore the newness of experience and post-generational remembering, as re-staged by the artists. This exhibition functions as a counter-monument, a joint re-telling of events and re-placing of memories from both countries. It forms an extensive safety net for the remnants of memories and stories from an assortment of marginal but key individuals, and the vertical and horizontal meshing of ideas and experiences creates a network of micro-histories, aspiring to resolve feelings of disconnection and silence. This is an act that bridges the generational divide between past and present while providing an optimistic opportunity for the exploration of multi-sensorial cultural media. (Written by Eunhyun Park)

Artist and Artwork Introduction

Chan Sook Choi |
Myitkyina, 2021, 2 Ch-Video Installation, 18:30, 4k on HD, Sound, Loop.

Chan Sook Choi is a South Korean contemporary artist currently based between Germany and South Korea. Choi’s work explores the potential of narration, video installation, and other multi/interdisciplinary practices to reflect the condensed energies and bodies of historicity contained in human memory, using temporal media about topics such as psychological migration and memory to unravel the deep, inherent sentiments of our time.

Chan Sook Choi's Myitkyina (2019) is a two-channel video installation that tells the story of 20 Korean “comfort women” based in Myitkyina, Burma during the Japanese military occupation in World War II. While no actual witnesses or witness accounts have ever been officially presented, text and photographic records from Allied forces reports confirm evidence of the existence of these cases. The work features three Myitkyinas as fictional witnesses, each speaking on existing controversies regarding the Japanese Military’s use of “comfort women.” Yet, at times, the accounts subtly contradict each other, reflecting the condition that no single voice can be an ideal representation of all perspectives. The contradictory dialectic used to depict this moment in the Japanese Military “comfort women” narrative is a key component of Chan Sook Choi's Myitkyina. By reporting these different (imagined) historical narratives, the artist is able to critique the tendency to discuss “comfort women” as an abstract concept rather than a lived reality.

Artist and Artwork Introduction

Chan Sook Choi |
Myitkyina, 2021, 2 Ch-Video Installation, 18:30, 4k on HD, Sound, Loop.

Chan Sook Choi is a South Korean contemporary artist currently based between Germany and South Korea. Choi’s work explores the potential of narration, video installation, and other multi/interdisciplinary practices to reflect the condensed energies and bodies of historicity contained in human memory, using temporal media about topics such as psychological migration and memory to unravel the deep, inherent sentiments of our time.

Chan Sook Choi's Myitkyina (2019) is a two-channel video installation that tells the story of 20 Korean “comfort women” based in Myitkyina, Burma during the Japanese military occupation in World War II. While no actual witnesses or witness accounts have ever been officially presented, text and photographic records from Allied forces reports confirm evidence of the existence of these cases. The work features three Myitkyinas as fictional witnesses, each speaking on existing controversies regarding the Japanese Military’s use of “comfort women.” Yet, at times, the accounts subtly contradict each other, reflecting the condition that no single voice can be an ideal representation of all perspectives. The contradictory dialectic used to depict this moment in the Japanese Military “comfort women” narrative is a key component of Chan Sook Choi's Myitkyina. By reporting these different (imagined) historical narratives, the artist is able to critique the tendency to discuss “comfort women” as an abstract concept rather than a lived reality.

Hwa Yeon Park |
There Are Leaves of Grass in the Forest, 2021, 1 Ch-Video Installation, 06:05, 4k on HD. Audio and Script Installation.

Hwa Yeon Park is a contemporary artist working in Gwangju and Gangwon-do, South Korea. While participating in the 2018 Gwangju Biennale “Imagined Borders,” Park began making work in relation to the May 18th Democratization Movement, identifying as a post-generation Korean without full or direct experience of the event itself, and has since expanded the scope of her research to include marginalized workers and victims of state violence in Korea.

Hwa Yeon Park's There Are Leaves of Grass in the Forest (2021) is a one-channel video and audio work produced in collaboration with Yeonwoo Kim, a dancer and a relation of one of the May 18th Uprising victims. Both Park and Kim were born after the massacre of Gwangju citizens by martial law forces in 1980. Categorically members of the post-generation, their collaboration is an attempt to counter the otherization and limitations imposed by Korean society on bereaved family members. Kim incorporates dance as an expressive method to invoke her individuality as a human being, negating concepts of victimhood, and Park provides alternative tellings of the Uprising, not specifically to counter but to supplement actual firsthand narratives. Through their conversations, the artists confirm their shared emotions about the weight of the event, particularly affective “inflammation” and feelings of burden, fatigue, and prejudice as well as consciousness of debt, love and desire. Expressing these shared emotions through sounds, gestures, and breathing, There Are Leaves of Grass in the Forest avoids direct interpretation through language and instead uses a multi-sensorial approach to storytelling.

Hyewon Keum |
Midnight Trip, 2018, Unburned, 2018, Family Photos, 2018, Unification Observatory, 2017, Hometown Memories, 2017, Mixed Media Installation.

Hyewon Keum is a contemporary artist based in Seoul whose art practice is inclined towards the nooks and cracks that evade our attention in the every day. From urban sites of redevelopment to city waste disposal facilities, Keum’s photography captures the other side of the city, that which is not always revealed in plain sight.

Based on six notebooks left by her maternal grandmother, Keum has produced two novels, the first narrated by her grandmother and the other by her mother. Midnight Trip tells the story of a family evacuating from North to South Korea just before the Korean War breaks out, and Unburned deals with them living together and accommodating the refugees who flocked to Busan after the war began. In both novels, the story is reconstructed by projecting Keum's thoughts and imagination while also demonstrating an active consciousness of the past being re-collected by a living artist in the present time.

Keum's Family Photos repurposes photographs taken in both North and South Korea from the 1940s through to the 1970s. The artist selected images from ordinary sites of human activity, such as a piano room, a zoo, a hallway, and digitally removed the humans out of the scenes, leaving only hints of interactivity. The specters of objectivity still haunt the photos, making already disembodied memories even more questionable. Now these gaps and absences provide room for speculation and projection from the audience members, allowing them to make and participate in their own montage.

Yen-Yen Ho |
On the Ground，2021，Wood, Asphalt, Gravel, Resin Mortar, Acrylic Resin Floor Paint, Traffic Paint, Mirror, Chewing Gum, Ink, Paper

Yen-Yen HO is based in Taipei. Her works are often inspired by personal experience through observation of the present. With the knowledge on science, specifically astronomy and geography, she presents the metaphorical state of mind through works. By putting together objects into site-specific works, grasping of connection between space and narrative, the works capture the connectivity and looseness between reality and fiction.

On the Ground develops from an overlooked newspaper clipping on 19th March 2014, about Dr. Chao-Lin Kuo, a Taiwanese cosmologist and the team of Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. They announced that they had discovered features in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) that are consistent with gravitational waves from the early universe. With the BICEP2 telescope, this result agreed with predictions from the decades-old theory of inflation.

Along with this dedicated cosmologist, the crowd occupying the Parliament ignited stormy scenes. While the dates objectively recording both events, the artist suddenly notices the very moment of a faint individual in the collective. Retrospecting the experiences with a temporary community and of its mobilization and gathering, what strikingly real is the loneliness caused by the disengagement while being an outsider in a movement, in which a sense of unfamiliarity is also included. With the assemblage of spatial experiences, the artist tackles with a shared body memory within a temporary community and explores surroundings in the public sphere. The potential connection behind those seemingly unassociated fragments depicts how to frame a collective in a decisive event.

Jui-Chien Hsu |
Bathroom-Blocks-Humidity-1, 2021, soap, towel, glass, iron, plaster.

Relative Humidity, 2021, soap, towel, iron

Bathroom-Three-Quarter, 2019, soap, towel, glass, iron, tile, stainless steel

Counterpoint-Adsorption, 2022, iron, plaster, magnetic square ruler

Twisted Parts, 2022, iron, plaster, fixture

Based in Taipei, Jui-Chien Hsu’s art practice is characterized by the composition of lines and blocks with indisputable logic, though what he explores is the generation of sentiment between bodily action and material components. Hsu undermines the foundations of ordinary objects and returns them to an unstable status in order to acquire other possibilities of perceiving them in a distant or unfamiliar manner.

Jui-Chien Hsu began the Bathroom series in 2017. Being one of his few works that refers to a particular space, Bathroom traces people’s trajectories in a private context. Hsu started by capturing the materials, characteristics, and smells of the spaces while envisioning the interactive relationship between the perceptions and the acting subjects. He then switched the arrangement and allocation of the components to build a configuration with multiple interpretations that can trigger different memories. In this exhibition, Hsu’s Bathroom series realigns the bathroom as a scene of daily living, allowing individuals to trace and regenerate memories with a much more extensive perceptual scope.

Works

The Entrance of “Nets of Fragmented Memories”.

Chan Sook Choi, Myitkyina, 2021, 2 Ch-Video Installation, 18:30, 4k on HD, Sound, Loop.

Hwa Yeon Park, There Are Leaves of Grass in the Forest, 2021, 1 Ch-Video Installation, 06:05, 4k on HD. Audio and Script Installation.

Hyewon Keum, Midnight Trip, 2018, Unburned, 2018, Family Photos, 2018, Unification Observatory, 2017, Hometown Memories, 2017, Mixed Media Installation.

Yen-Yen Ho, On the Ground，2021，Wood, Asphalt, Gravel, Resin Mortar, Acrylic Resin Floor Paint, Traffic Paint, Mirror, Chewing Gum, Ink, Paper

Bathroom-Three-Quarter, 2019, soap, towel, glass, iron, tile, stainless steel

Relative Humidity, 2021, soap, towel, iron
Bathroom-Blocks-Humidity-1, 2021, soap, towel, glass, iron, plaster.