Join us for the Opening Reception on Tuesday, October 22, from 6–8pm.

The International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) presents an immersive installation by Sujin Lim that memorializes a place transformed by industrial and commercial development. Anchored by two large-scale wall murals, The Land, Dark and Muddy extends from the artist’s ongoing research on the rapidly changing environment of the remote fishing island of Yeongheung in Incheon, South Korea, where her father grew up. For this exhibition, Lim creates a poetic tribute to a devastated landscape and community, highlighting what is lost and what remains. 

Over the past three decades, Yeongheung has undergone a drastic shift: the island’s natural features and ecosystems have disappeared as a result of development and a surge in changing tidelines—markers of climate change that are now increasingly common in coastal locations around the world. A tide embankment, built in 1994, significantly increased the water flow and washed away most of the tidelands, destroying the habitat for marine life, while a bridge connecting the island to the mainland was erected in order to build a power plant, which ultimately polluted the sea water and further altered the surrounding scenery. Lim reimagines the vanished land through two wall paintings made using mud from Yeongheung. Alongside these paintings is a stenciled text of a conversation between the artist and her father, and a single-channel video projection of her painting performance on the island. Titled Landscape Painting (2019), Lim positions a large canvas in front of the site she depicts, allowing her to obscure the island’s modern construction and infrastructure and superimpose the original scenery, as recollected by her father and other residents. Playfully alluding to the landscape painting tradition, Lim’s compositions poignantly capture a seaside that now only exists in memory.

As Lim has observed: “No landscape is ever neutral. Each one has multiple layers of history, interpretation, and importance. The Land, Dark and Muddy is about unearthing the social and political contexts embedded in the landscape and reinterpreting them by posing the following questions: Who has the authority to reshape a landscape? Who are the people affected by those changes?” 

Lim is currently an artist-in-residence in ISCP’s Ground Floor Residency Program designed for New York-based artists. Through site-specific installations and sculptures, Lim transforms actual locations into surreal images and alternative realities as a means to confront social, political and environmental injustices. Sujin Lim has exhibited work at Brooklyn Museum, New York; Seoul Museum of Art, South Korea; Museum of Moscow, Russia; and MARCO Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Argentina, among other venues.

This exhibition is curated by Melinda Lang, ISCP’s Director of Programs and Exhibitions. It is supported by Alice and Lawrence Weiner; Danna and Ed Ruscha; Hartfield Foundation; Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation; Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation; New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council; Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso; New York City Council District 34; New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; James Rosenquist Foundation; and William Talbott Hillman Foundation.
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Accessibility information: Please note that the entrance to ISCP has seven steps and a ramp, which is ADA compliant. There are seven artist studios and one exhibition space which can be accessed on the first floor of ISCP. There is an accessible bathroom on the first floor at the end of the hallway, up one step, where the artist studios are located. To access the second floor there is a staircase with a grab bar installed on the right side with 22 steps. The second floor has 22 artist and curator studios, one exhibition space, and a lounge where remarks by our guest speaker will take place. To access the third floor there is a staircase with a grab bar installed on the right side with 24 steps. The third floor has five artist and curator studios.

ISCP can access a freight elevator to bring visitors between the first and second floors on request. ISCP can offer two reserved parking spaces on request for people with disabilities. Please email Veronica Sanchez at vsanchez@iscp-nyc.org to request a parking space and/or freight elevator usage.