Young In Hong
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.
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Double Encounter (2009)
by Young In Hong
Description
Shadows of ghost-like figures are cast to the walls. Whereas their faces are visible, their bodies seem to be hovering, even transparent. The artist has fused many faces: those of historical characters usually represented in monuments around the city, individuals 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 visitors' bodies.
Undoing the construction of hierarchies represented by historical monuments, the artist questions the mechanisms of 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 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.
Through Double Encounter, the contemporary body is placed in a more complex dimension of time; the body becomes a host that history uses to keep itself alive.
Artist
Young In Hong (b. 1972, Seoul, Korea)
Young In Hong works in the United Kingdom and Korea. Hong engages in research-led practice spanning interests in undervalued cultural practices, the politics of intuition, and equality. She has done a series of investigations into the notion of modernity, which she sees as an intensive force of experience.
She is currently working with textiles and performance within a fine art context. Her embroidery paintings and performances are often closely intertwined. They have been exhibited at international venues, including Turner Contemporary (Margate, United Kingdom, 2017), Block Universe (London, 2017), Milan Triennale (Italy, 2016), Grand Palais (Paris, 2016), Cecilia Hillström Gallery (Stockholm, 2016 and 2013), ICA (London, 2015), Gwangju Biennale (2014 and 2004), Delfina Foundation (London, 2014), Kukje Gallery (Seoul, 2013), Museum of Arts and Design (New York, 2011), Saatchi Gallery (London, 2010), A Foundation (Liverpool, United Kingdom, 2008), Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris, 2007) and Taipei Fine Art Museum (Taipei, 2002).
In 2019 she was selected to participate in the Korea Art Prize, organized by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Seoul). Hong obtained a BA in Sculpture from Seoul National University (1996), and went on to achieve an MA and Ph.D. in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College (2000, 2012)
