Kim Sung-hwan solo exhibition tells unique story of Korean diaspora in Hawaii

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Kim Sung-hwan solo exhibition tells unique story of Korean diaspora in Hawaii

Published: 18 Dec. 2024, 16:14

SHIN MIN-HEE
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Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

A still from ″Hair is a piece of head″ (2021) by Kim Sung-hwan [SEMA]

Every year, the Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA) in Jung District, central Seoul, highlights one contemporary Korean artist for a solo exhibition.

Lee Bul was featured in 2021, Chung Seo-young in 2022 and Koo Bohnchang in 2023.

This year, the honor goes to Kim Sung-hwan, a 49-year-old artist based in Hawaii and New York. Using a wide range of genres like architecture, film, music and literature, Kim's work delves into social structure through personal narratives or historical records.

The artist has previously held exhibitions at Tate Modern in London and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

It’s now Kim’s first major exhibition at a public museum in the country, the title of which is “Ua a’o ‘ia ‘o ia e ia.” Even SeMA’s general director Choi Eun-ju admitted that she had to practice several times to get the name’s pronunciation correct.

Installation view of “Ua a’o ‘ia ‘o ia e ia,″ the solo exhibition of Kim Sung-hwan at the Seoul Museum of Art in central Seoul [SEMA]

The title is a juxtaposition of Hawaiian and Korean phonetics, the meaning of which is emphasized not in the literal interpretation but in the delay of translation. Kim says that this is an analogy that encourages room for thought regarding the relationship between the two languages and cultures.

The exhibition centers on the story of some 120 Korean migrants who arrived in Hawaii in 1903. Many laborers from all over the world, including China and Japan, left their home countries from the mid-19th century to find a new life in the U.S., stopping by the Aloha State along the way via boats.

A still from ″By Mary Jo Freshley″ (2023) by Kim Sung-hwan [SEMA]

Kim discovered the complex, diasporic narratives that blossomed in Hawaii and reinterpreted them in his “A Record of Drifting Across the Sea” (2017-) project, which is comprised of prints, installations and videos. He arranged the pieces in a way that allows visitors to examine them collectively at once as “witnesses.” His works even allow visitors to participate in his work process as “producers” — a feature set to be ongoing during the exhibition’s run.

Among the three sections, “Room 2” will function as Kim’s studio space to produce his upcoming video “Untitled,” as part of “A Record of Drifting Across the Sea,” between mid-February to March next year. The structure of the exhibition will also continuously change to help the audience understand Kim’s thought process on the development of the project.

Installation view of “Ua a’o ‘ia ‘o ia e ia,″ the solo exhibition of Kim Sung-hwan at the Seoul Museum of Art in central Seoul [SEMA]

“Rooms 1 and 3 are familiar spaces to visitors, and you could say that they represent speech,” Kim said during a news conference on Wednesday. “Room 2 is the tongue, which is the device that helps create the speech, or sound.”

“Ua a’o ‘ia ‘o ia e ia” continues until March 30, 2025. SeMA is open every day except Mondays from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. On weekends, it closes at 6 p.m. The exhibition is free.

BY SHIN MIN-HEE [[email protected]]