By Arlo Matisz
GWANGJU — “Residence and Different Locations,” this 12 months’s Canadian Pavilion exhibition in Yangnim Artwork Middle for the Gwangju Biennale, transcends the familiarity one may count on from a second consecutive exhibition of Inuit artwork on the occasion. After schedule disruption as a result of COVID-19 pandemic, the fifteenth Gwangju Biennale opened simply over one 12 months after the 14th, to return to its even-year biannual cycle.
It was ultimately 12 months’s Biennale {that a} particular connection between Gwangju and the Canadian Arctic started to develop. It appears acceptable that for the 2024-2025 Yr of Cultural Exchanges between the 2 nations, a singular collaboration has produced an exhibition that manages to be wildly completely different from its predecessor.
“The thought of differentiating this pavilion from final 12 months’s was precisely the place to begin for the creation of this pavilion,” co-curator William Huffman defined.
In 2023, Inuit artwork made its option to Gwangu for the primary time. For the 14th Gwangju Biennale, assorted works from the West Baffin Artwork Collective in Kinngait (Cape Dorset) in Canada’s northern territory of Nunavut had been exhibited on the Canadian Pavilion within the Lee Kang Ha Artwork Museum. The exhibit proved well-liked; guests had been thrilled with the duality of their expertise, connecting with a tradition that appeared mysterious and remoted whereas realizing that the artwork’s nature themes resonated with Korean shamanist traditions. Curiosity was rising, and artwork thrives with intertest. The place may it go from there?
“We had 93 works by 32 artists. Actually, why would you do one thing like that? It is such an enormous exhibition; there’re so many objects,” Huffman mentioned, earlier than answering his personal query. “It was to offer a survey. We put collectively one thing that will give folks an thought of what goes on on this bizarre little studio on this bizarre little place within the Arctic, considering that that was our engagement and that we might transfer on. However with the invitation to come back again in 2024, we had lower than a 12 months to conceptualize what that is, and to be confronted with the truth that folks will keep in mind what the 2023 Pavilion seemed like once they come into this one.”
Co-curator Solar Lee, who additionally co-curated with William in 2023, described what occurred throughout that point that allowed this exhibition to take form.
“After efficiently concluding the ‘Religion Turns into Actuality’ exhibition on the Canada Pavilion final 12 months, I traveled to the Arctic in November. This June, we made one other journey to the Arctic,” Lee mentioned. “Because of this, we now have been getting ready for this 12 months’s Canada Pavilion exhibition.”
This 12 months’s exhibition options 9 artists, together with six Inuit artists and three Korean artists.
“It’s an immense honor for us, and I really feel deeply joyful to have the ability to introduce the lives and works of Inuit artists on this distinctive house,” Lee mentioned.
The exhibition carries the theme “Residence and Different Locations.” The Inuit artists created new works introduced via wall drawings. In an underground house, resident artists current their work via varied genres and approaches impressed by the Arctic.
“Inuit artists and artists dwelling in Gwangju are exploring the idea of house in numerous and inventive methods,” Lee mentioned. “This exhibition delves into the completely different tales and reminiscences surrounding house whereas additionally carrying a forward-looking message in regards to the form of properties we are going to stay in sooner or later.”
“The thought was to take the thought of what Inuit artwork is, the stuff that folks actually admire about it, the issues that resonated with the viewers right here and attempt to amplify that,” Huffman added.
The artists introduced ink drawings, all in black and white, initially completed on paper and blown up into wall murals, completed by two native artists. Huffman defined why all of the artwork was monochromatic.
“One was that we needed it to be unified in order that once you come into the house, it’s essential focus on what you are , to acknowledge ‘Oh proper, that is Shuvinai Ashoona, that is Qavavau Manumie, that is Ningiukulu Teevee,’ as a result of it is all black and white,” he mentioned. “The opposite purpose we needed black and white is that (in) the ultimate week of the exhibition, we’re inviting the general public to paint the works!”
The collaboration between artists in Gwangju and Kinngait, 8,770 kilometers and a number of other days of journey aside, took immense effort.
“Two delegations got here from Gwangju to Kinngait,” Huffman mentioned. “Take into consideration what that appears like. After we introduced the exhibition final 12 months, plenty of native artists had been fascinated by this, and that is what developed the preliminary discussions. There appears to be an urge for food for artists to come back to Canada, to the Arctic. I believe after the 2 delegations — a lot of the members got here twice — persons are speaking with familiarity in regards to the Arctic. What we have at all times tried to do with the West Baffin Cooperative, the group I work for is that as a result of we’re remoted on this tiny little island within the Canadian Arctic, it’s essentially vital for us to break down geography. I’ve to have discussions with different locations on the planet or we cannot perform. This has been a shining instance of how we have been in a position to do this. Midway throughout the planet, we have been in a position to develop a circumstance the place we have got Korean artists snug within the Arctic, who know they’ve a spot, and vice versa, the Inuit artists in Kinngait now have a spot right here.”
Lee described her personal emotions in making the journey.
“The Arctic we thought we knew and the ‘Qanittaq’ (‘freshly fallen snow’ within the Inuktitut language) we skilled firsthand had been truly fairly completely different,” she mentioned. “Whereas the pure setting of the Arctic is usually the main target, my objective for going was to fulfill the Inuit artists. Encountering individuals who have embraced this land as their future was a profoundly distinctive, mystical and memorable expertise for us.”
Artist Lee Jo-heum sighed deeply as he described his personal expertise going to Kinngait through the summer time. “It is actually lovely and superior, however slightly bizarre, and really arduous to go there.” Laughing, he elaborated on what was bizarre. “There was no evening! It was at all times brilliant. I am Korean — the temperature was like my nation’s winter.”
Lee described his interpretation of the theme.
“Occupied with house, my opinion is that our house is our physique,” he mentioned. “Our mother and father give us a physique, and begin our life, after which we make our personal physique; we develop muscle tissues and scars. So I painted this face, physique, palms and ft. I believe Korean and Kinngait folks, one thing could be very completely different, however one thing could be very related. So I drew two folks.”
Huffman expanded on the outcomes of the collaborative interpretation of the exhibition’s theme.
“There are two very completely different teams of artists right here, from Gwangju and from Kinngait, responding to thought of house, and the place house got here from. Not solely had been the artists considering one another’s practices, however in addition they had these questions, ‘What do you do once you’re in your home, what’s your loved ones life, what sort of meals do you eat, what’s your historical past, what’s your geography and local weather?’ We realized the questions right here should not simply what sort of drawings do you make, what sort of sculptures you make, what sort of installations you assemble, what’s your artistic expression…it truly is about who you might be and what made you, and essentially what made your work. These are the questions being requested,” he mentioned.
“You possibly can see how completely different, once you go into the exhibit(ion)’s subterranean stage, these works are very completely different from the works you see on the primary ground, and these works by the Inuit artists are very completely different from one another. These are plenty of completely different views coming collectively and answering ‘What’s house? How do you outline a spot?'”
He added that after three years of visiting Korea, his personal cross-cultural expertise has helped outline the exhibition.
“I might by no means been to Asia prior, and what’s occurred for me is that this transformative second when you may develop a community, you may develop a spot someplace that is utterly overseas,” he mentioned. “The language is completely different, the tradition is completely different, the meals is completely different from what I am used to in Canada. So even from my curatorial perspective, how attention-grabbing that is been, what is that this relationship between Canada and Korea, me and my counterparts in Gwangju, that is what this present talks about.”
Gesturing at a display screen enjoying a brief movie about Inuk artist Kenojuak Ashevak Board produced in 1964 by the Nationwide Movie Board of Canada, Huffman contrasted the visiting artists’ expectations and experiences on the Cape Dorset Cultural Centre and Print Store.
“Whenever you see one thing like this, the historic representations of Inuit way of life, I believe that is what folks count on, and that is largely what the Korean artists anticipated,” he mentioned. “It was nothing like what they anticipated. The studio we now have within the Arctic is not what anybody expects. It is a state-of-the-art facility. Like no different place on the planet, to let you know the reality. When you weren’t wanting onto the tundra and the blizzards and the polar bears lumbering via city, you’d suppose you are wherever, you are in New York, Paris, London — it is that refined. That is what makes what the artists do actually outstanding compared to different circumstances on the planet. The truth that this type of expression comes out of such a distant place, however in that place, we have spent the cash and the consideration to construct the studio to permit this to occur. It was the intention with these two delegations that they might analysis and decide what sort of response they needed to create to their expertise within the Arctic.”
Huffman defined one of the crucial placing items, a group of monumental sculptures of barnacles.
“It is loopy stuff, these wonderful barnacles,” he mentioned. “There are these very poetic moments with (the artist) Kim Seol-a the place she’s interviewed the Inuit artists about what does the soul appear like, and he or she’s drawn a response to what the artists mentioned. Once more, these conversations had been very elementary and sensible on (the) one hand however very poetic on the opposite. Let’s speak about how would you conceptualize the soul, and that turned the uncooked materials that she processed into the work.”
Stepping off the road in Gwangju into the exhibition house is wondrously disorienting. Sounds of melting ice fill the background, whereas home windows are lined with Arctic landscapes, and movies play Arctic scenes.
“The thought of expertise is what we’re making an attempt to create right here,” Huffman mentioned. “We have created a home setting that adjustments the best way you work together with issues. When persons are right here, they’re work, and they’re being pulled forwards and backwards between Gwangju and Kinngait, forwards and backwards between the historical past of Inuit artwork and what’s taking place now, this narrative we’re creating inside a geographic context. What does it imply to come back to this studio and see artists working? What does it imply to come back to the Arctic and expertise the tundra? That is all right here.”
Simply as final 12 months’s exhibition led to this one, how will this collaboration evolve?
“What is the subsequent step?” Huffman requested. “That is actually a important level. We’re speaking in regards to the subsequent step, what does additional dialogue appear like. This relationship, what does this imply to have an expertise collectively, it must be long run, we have to make investments on this. Transferring ahead, we now have much more concepts for a way that is going to manifest.”
Lee touched on her personal hopes for the subsequent step.
“I hope that guests to the Canada Pavilion exhibition will include an open coronary heart to understand how Inuit artists and Korean artists have collaborated and expressed their concepts,” she mentioned. “It might be great if they may respect the various cultures represented right here and embrace the creative creations that these artists have produced of their pursuit of freedom and peace. We additionally hope that these works will proceed to be showcased not solely on the Gwangju Biennale and the Canada Pavilion however somewhere else as effectively.”
Arlo Matisz is an economics professor at Chosun College in Gwangju.