Past Residents
Past Resident2014: Arts Council Korea
Yongseok Oh
Yongseok Oh is a Korean-born artist who emphasizes the crossing of the past and the present, and of the real and the imagined, by creating a visual collage of stills, moving images and cinemas. He explores the structure of the cinema and daily life and collapses a certain cinematic narrative through collage techniques.
He has been recognized widely and his works have been shown at various international biennales including Seoul Media City Biennale, 2006; Shanghai Biennale, 2006; Seville Biennale, 2008; Biennale of Cuvee, Lintz, 2008 and Moscow Biennale, 2011. Selected group exhibitions include: Thermocline of Art, ZKM, Karlsruhe, 2007; Metamorphosis, Espace Louis Vuitton, Paris, 2008; CINEMA SIM, Itau Culture, San Paulo, 2008; Trance POP, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, 2008; The Imaginary Line, Gallery Hyundai, Seoul, 2009; Textual Landscapes, Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, New York, 2009; Sporadic positioning, Arario gallery, Cheonan, 2012 and Plateau, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, 2012. Recently, he collaborated on a project with L`OCCITANE, Paris.
Residents from South Korea
Past Resident2013: Wallace Arts Trust
Yuki Kihara
The title of Yuki Kihara’s new body of work, Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?, is lifted from a large-scale painting by Paul Gauguin completed in 1897 shortly before he died in Tahiti. Kihara uses these questions to frame her examination of Samoan culture and society following the tsunami of 2009, last year’s celebration of the 50th anniversary of Samoa’s independence and, most recently, the destruction caused by Cyclone Evan. Taking inspiration from a late 19th-century photograph Samoan Half Caste by New Zealand photographer Thomas Andrew, Kihara dons a Victorian mourning dress and appears as her alter-ego ‘Salome’ photographed in selected locations across Upolu island Samoa that are pointed allusions to the social, religious, economic and political issues the artist wishes to highlight. Referencing the staged photographic postcards of the ‘South Seas’, Salome’s lone figure stands as silent witness to scenes of political, historical and cultural importance in present-day Samoa. She turns the camera on her country’s colonial past, the impact of burgeoning globalisation, ideas of indigeneity and the role of government in an independent Samoa. Kihara “unpacks the myth” of her country as an untouched Pacific paradise as seen through the eyes of colonial powers and tourist photographs.
A native of Samoa, Yuki Kihara is an interdisciplinary artist whose work has been presented at Asia- Pacific Triennial; Auckland Triennial and the Sakahàn Quinquennial. Kihara’s first solo museum exhibition in North America entitled Yuki Kihara; Living Photographs (2008-09) was held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York following the acquisition of her works by the museum for their permanent collection. Kihara’s works and performances has also been shown internationally at de Young Museum, San Francisco; Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia; Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand; Zendai Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai; Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan; National Museum of Poznan, Warsaw; Centro Ricerca Arte Attuale, Italy; Rautenstrauch Joest Museum, Colonge; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Musée du quai Branly, Paris; Trodheim Kunstmuseum, Norway and National Gallery of Canada. Kihara’s most recent mid-career survey exhibition entitled Undressing the Pacific presented at the Hocken Library will tour several NZ institutions throughout 2013/2014 organized by the University of Otago, NZ. A publication on Kihara’s work is currently being edited by art historian Erika Wolf.
Past Resident2013: KdFS Kulturstiftung des Freistaates Sachsen
Anja Kempe
In her site-specific installations, videos and video installations, Anja Kempe deals with the unknown of physical space and the potential of movement. She develops architectural extensions that augment space. Her dynamic images of space act as expansive choreographies for the viewer. Her latest works deal with the body itself. She brings together the individual memory of the body and the collective memory of individual movements.
Anja Kempe (born 1973) was educated at the Karlsruhe University of Art and Design and at the Academy of Media Arts, Cologne. She has exhibited internationally in group shows and solo exhibitions including at z33, Hasselt; Ars Electronica Campus, Linz; Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart; Museum Schloss Moyland; Kunstverein Leipzig; NGBK Berlin; Interfood Vitrine, Aachen; Kunstraum Kreuzberg, Berlin; Art Cologne and Young Artist Project, Daegu. Kempe lives and works in Leipzig where she teaches at the Academy of Visual Arts.