Our site-responsive installation for the Real DMZ Project 2023 Exhibition: Checkpoint at Paju was the result of research and material experimentation conducted throughout Gyodong-do and Paju in the summer of 2023 and combined discrete works and interventions that activated the toilets in the barracks of the former US military facility known as Camp Greaves.
Anchored by Procession: Make-Believe You Me (2023) - a sculptural work that adapts the familiar T-shaped warning lights that emulate police cars and are commonly seen on the side of highways in South Korea to prevent speeding. Embedded within a figurative sculpture that alludes to makeshift scarecrows we documented in rice paddies near the border at Gyodong-do, the flashing llights flooded the tiled shower room with blue and red light. Despite making the symbols of punishment and disciplinary action meaningless as soon as they are recognized by drivers, these flashing lights persistently dot most sections of the highway. Color theory holds that blue and red are complementary colors, yet they have increasingly become suggestive of the left and right in divisive global politics. Associative binaries like south and north, water and fire, full and empty, here and gone, whole and divided, rich and poor, up and down, you and me are complicated in an installation that favours porousness, in-betweeness and transgression as methods of survival in divided times.
Works Include:
Procession: Make-Believe You Me (2023)
Mirror, LED police lights, burglar bars, magnets, fire extinguisher, used textiles and clothing.
Pour it on the head, ends up on the heels (2023)
Pump, hose, water, soju, sandbags, plumbing fixtures, plastic bottles, custom-printed t-shirts, bugs found in the Camp Greaves bathroom site.
Under the Tongue (2023)
charcoal, found cigarette butts in urinal.
The Myth (Zone) (2023)
Found "Cafe Sisyphe" matchbook, yellow PMMA.
To Die of Too Much (2023)
Used LG Styler (Steam wardrobe), custom printed apron, natural lacquer on hanji, newspapers, rubber mat, magnets.
fire with fire behind bars (2023)
Natural lacquer on hemp cloth.
Crushed as Rust (Sewer) (2023)
Natural lacquer (ottchil) with structural colour pigment, pounded aluminum, aluminum frame.
