Young In Hong, Double Encounter, 2009
transparent scenic fabric, stage lights, polyester thread
approx. 280 × 800 cm
Courtesy of the artist
Shadows of ghost-like figures are cast to the walls. Whereas their faces are clearly visible, their bodies seem to be hovering, even transparent. The artist has fused together a multitude of faces: those of historical characters usually represented in monuments around the city, as well as those of individuals found on the streets and a range of social and print media. Each figure of this unlikely collage of the past and the present is gazing at different points, yet from an equal stand. As visitors walk through, shadows reflected on the walls overlap with the bodies of the visitors.
Undoing the construction of hierarchies represented by historical monuments, Young In Hong questions the mechanisms of the society. The history of power, disproportionately dominated by men as are the statutes occupying the street and public squares, social structure and wealth constitute the layers of the city; each of which in this “strange montage” of different time and space is illuminated in the work. The artist has also been developing a unique body of work using embroidery which, for the artist, is one of the traditional forms of female labor and solidarity, which in itself is an art. Sewing in this work is the means through which the social order at the margin between the East and the West is reflected on together with the activities of South Korea’s economy.
On view at the Korean Cultural Center
Young In Hong, White Cranes and Snowfall, 2024
natural sedge (왕골) (ornamental grass), white sand,
installation of eight pairs of shoes for cranes
dimensions variable
Courtesy of the artist
White Cranes and Snowfall was produced as an outcome of a research trip in the Winter of 2023 observing a number of rare cranes migrating to the demilitarised zone (DMZ). The work represents a hybrid territory where humans and birds and their relations are metaphorically re-envisaged through a set of sedge woven shoes for cranes. These shoes theatrically express the presence of cranes humorously mimicking the human world by wearing individually different design of boots. Hong tried to see them as different individuals rather than as a group of anonymous ‘cranes’; each crane was personified as they were observed in the peaceful snowy fields. The once blood-stained DMZ was thus transformed into an ecological paradise for the cranes. When nature is left alone it can replenish its lives, and when humans observe other species more carefully, they can learn something from them that alters their way of being in the world.
Young In Hong (b. 1972, Seoul, KR, lives and works in Bristol, UK) works across installation, sound, performance, textile and drawing. Her practice often focuses on undervalued cultural practices and seeks for a sense of equality that gently undermines ruling hierarchies. In recent years, Hong has increasingly examined notions of inter-species communication, symbolism and the hybridity of sound, movement and objects in the context of other-than-human voices.
Recent solo exhibitions: Spike Island, Bristol, UK (2024); Kunsthal Extra City, Antwerp, BE (2023); Exeter Phoenix, UK (2018); the Korean Cultural Centre, London, UK (2017); and Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, UK (2015). In 2019, Hong was shortlisted for the Korea Artist Prize.
