Biographie:
The work of Minouk Lim (b. 1968, Daejeon, KR) extends personal experiences into a broader social realm, combining the intense political context of historical discontinuity and trauma with challenging yet sensory poetic narratives. Ranging from sculptures in non-fixed, fragile forms using organic materials, to video and performance that reposition fact and fiction, to multifaceted installations incorporating drawings, paintings, text, and sound, the artist’s work transcends the boundaries of genres and categories of media, reaching the point where each medium intersects and translates one another. Lim’s works engage in a “reconfiguration of the sensible” that seeks to uncover history’s hidden voices and forms. Her media is based on questions about modernity, issues of community and memory, and reflections on places concealed by time and space. Lim’s work is considered a “mediumistic media” that explores forms that revitalize endangered relationships in unfinished structures.
Lim’s major solo exhibitions include Fossil of High Noon, Tina Kim Gallery, New York, US (2022); New Town Ghost GAGAHOHO, DAAD gallery, Berlin, DE (2017); The Promise of If, PLATEAU Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, KR (2015); United Paradox, Portikus, Frankfurt, DE (2015); Heat of Shadow, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, US (2012); and Jump Cut, Art Sonje Center, Seoul, KR (2008). She has also participated in The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (2021); the biennales of Lyon, FR, (2019); Aichi, JP (2019); Busan, KR (2018); Setouchi, JP (2016); Sydney, AU (2016); Taipei, TW (2016); Gwangju, KR (2014); Paris Triennale, FR (2012); Liverpool, UK (2010) and Istanbul, TR (2007). She has been awarded the Hermes Foundation Missulsang (2007), Korea Artist Prize (2012), Robert Rauschenberg artist residency (2018), DAAD residency grant (2016) and The Obayashi Foundation Research Program grant (2023). She was also honored with the 2024 Asia Arts Game Changer Award presented by Asia Society New York, US.
Works:
Minouk Lim, Currahee – Stand Alone, 2023
27 military blankets, acrylic paint, spray paint
dimensions variable
Courtesy of the artist
Military blankets represent a place of security and refuge for soldiers, however briefly, amid their harsh training and brutal battlefield conditions. While military issue blankets for Korean soldiers are not officially permitted to be sold in public, they still appear in some markets, where artist Minouk Lim was able to amass a collection of them over time.
For the DMZ Exhibition: Checkpoint (2023), Lim thought back to the US 2nd Infantry Division’s 506th Regiment stationed at Camp Greaves, located in the Demilitarized Zone at the 38th parallel dividing North and South Korea. The original 506th was a setting for the Army parachute unit training during World War II, based near the Currahee Mountain in the state of Georgia in the United States. The name of the mountain denotes that the site is the unceded territory of the indigenous Cherokee tribe, “currahee” meaning to “stand alone” or “withstand something on one’s own” in the Cherokee language. Therefore, this became the motto of the US 2nd Infantry Division’s 506th Regiment. Lim was interested in the layer of time and place that converge through this camp.
Some of the blankets Lim sourced still retain labels with the soldier’s names; still bearing the physical remnants such as the creases created by the soldier’s. The 27 military blankets have been painted with shapes of indecipherable meaning. Lim used the creases and stains to guide her formal decisions, often retracing over the folds or echoing them through other marks.
Floating in midair, the blankets seem like something out of a dream: existing beyond interpretation and presenting unclear boundaries. Yet sleep is something that comes to us all, without regard for ideology, solidarity, or purpose. Currahee – Stand Alone interprets the controlled DMZ in terms of a structure of consciousness, representing it as a realm of sleep beyond human control and as a time of play with the universe. It is indomitable, just as none of us can ever conquer sleep.
Minouk Lim, It's a Name I Gave Myself, 2018
single-channel video, colour, sound, 20:36 min.
Courtesy of the artist
Years of Japanese colonial rule and the Korean War resulted in the separation of over ten million families in Korea. On June 30, 1983, the Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) commemorated the 30th anniversary of the Korean War Armistice Agreement with a three-hour live broadcast special entitled Finding Dispersed Families, aiming to reunite separated family members living in South Korea. Beyond all expectations, an astounding number of 60,000 applications were registered, with approximately 100,000 family members of the dispersed families flooding the broadcasting studio and the adjacent Yeouido Square.
With the overwhelming public response, KBS cancelled all of its scheduled programs and continued the live broadcast for the next 453 hours. When the broadcast was over, 10,189 people were reunited with their families through the program, while over 200,000 people remained around the studio with lingering hope. The studio became filled with objects and storyboards illustrating their personal stories with unique designs, hoping to catch people’s eyes and ears.
This video presents the stories of those people who could not remember their own names or age, or those of their family members, because they were too young at the time of separation.
Minouk Lim, Mom, 2024
Scandia moss, wild licorice, terracotta powder, wooden cane, Agar agar, FRP (fiberglass-reinforced polymer)
132 x 45 x 23 cm
Courtesy of the artist
Mom (2024) is constructed from dried scandia moss, a walking stick covered by terracotta powder, and wild licorice, whose roots are consumed as tea in Korea. The Korean translation for the lichen ”ji-eui-ryu” means “cloth of the earth“ in English, and in the language of flowers, moss can also mean solitude or maternal love. This work stemmed from the question: what is the world when we are without a home?
As the artist notes: “In my mind, home is like a child's body because home is neither a fixed place nor a fixed memory for me. It's something that changes all the time but doesn't change at the same time. Home is not objectively observed as if you don't remember your childhood body. As such, the body of a child is neither a baby nor an adult but remains like a missing being in the middle. People with no way of remembering, as if they have forgotten their home, need some presence waiting for them. This presence will be there like moss under the shade of a tree, and their home and memory will explore the world like a three-legged child.”
The walking stick installed with Mom is “Cane” which is from Chai Eui Jin, the survivor of the Mungyeong massacre in 1949. In that incident, South Korean soldiers killed 88 civilians, including 32 children, for the suspicion of them being communists. Lim's sculptures serve as intermediary objects: simultaneously alive and dead. They represent and mourn lost places, people, and their stories.
