To explore the boundaries between artwork and audience, Gimhongsok created a series of sculptural performances in which a person wearing an animal costume poses in the gallery. Bunny’s Sofa is a continuation of this series, but with a different twist. Instead of hiring a real person to dress as the animal, Gimhongsok placed a mannequin inside the rabbit costume. When exhibiting the work, the artist produces a false statement claiming that he has paid an illegal worker from North Korea to wear the suit and to maintain a lounging posture for a certain length of time. But both the performer and the financial transaction existed only in the text, truths concealed by the costume and social propriety. By interchanging physical realities and contexts and obscuring details, Gimhongsok challenges the effectiveness of visual and textual communication to create a potential moral anxiety in the viewers.
Raising questions about South Korea’s position in the world beyond its own social and political borders, Seoul-based artist Gimhongsok investigates communication, language, and popular culture. Gimhongsok’s ideas and deadpan satirical humor manifest themselves in many media and, because his creative process and personal style remain enigmatic, he is considered to be a “mysterious genius” in his homeland. Whether overt or implicit in their message, Gimhongsok’s spectacular works juxtapose image and language to lure viewers into a labyrinthine journey towards ever-elusive meaning.
Tania Libre is a film by Lynn Hershman Leeson centered around renowned artist Tania Bruguera and her experience as a political artist and activist under the repressive government of her native Cuba...
Sarcastically titled to call attention to the problematic notions underlying colonialism, this photograph shows hundreds of Native Malaysians seated quietly behind one of their colonial oppressors...
In the six-minute single-channel video Higher Horse , Kate Gilmore perches herself on top of a tall pile of plaster blocks, in front of a pink colored wall with vein-like streaks of red...
Tania Libre is a film by Lynn Hershman Leeson centered around renowned artist Tania Bruguera and her experience as a political artist and activist under the repressive government of her native Cuba...
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Master Conversations: Costume Design with Catherine Kodicek and Lyn Gardner | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia ArtsEquator Viewpoints June 3, 2021 Costume designer and supervisor Catherine Kodicek shares about her practice and process, and issues around costume awareness and advocacy within the UK theatre context, alongside UK theatre critic Lyn Gardner...
McCarthy’s Mother Pig performance at Shushi Gallery in 1983 was the first time he used a set, a practice which came to characterize his later works...
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