jeong-ok
jeon
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An art exhibition is the result of the communication
between artists, curators and audiences, where the curators become the
channel for this communication, bonding artists to their audience. Through
initiating, facilitating and realizing an exhibition, a curator as mediator
becomes a creator who provides a new way of seeing the world in the context
of contemporary art. I hope that sharing my experience as a curator and
independent art consultant might similarly create a bond between Asian
artists and curators in the US who share common concerns and interests,
and perhaps inspire a collaboration to establish a foundation for Asian
arts in the international art scene.
My career as an art curator began in 2002 at SSamzie Space in Seoul,
a nonprofit organization founded to nurture the emerging, cutting-edge
arts in Korea. I was responsible for running their "Studio Program",
where national and international artists are invited to use SSamzie's
studio spaces and given opportunities to network, their work culminating
in an "Open Studio Exhibition" that visualizes its outcome.
In 2003, I was invited as a curatorial assistant to the Korean Pavilion
Exhibition, "Landscape of Differences" at the 50th Venice Biennale.
My work expanded to co-organizing the annual international exchange exhibition,
one of which was "Seoul-Brisbane Artists Exchange Exhibition" in
2004, in partnership with the Institute of Modern Art (IMA). Three Australian
and three Korean artists were selected and provided with studio spaces
in their host countries. I was able to smoothen the preparation process,
particularly for the Australian artists who quickly acquired new cultural
experiences that they would later express in their art. As a curator,
I was constantly communicating with the Korean artists who resided in
IMA's studios, helping them find ways of using everyday materials and
found objects to create works that demonstrated a deeper sense of cultural
integration and collaboration with their host city. The two resulting
exhibitions – one in Brisbane and the other in Seoul – were
a tremendous and well-attended success, and earned the exchange exhibition
a reputation of being distinctive and meaningful since it generated new
art forms and developed a genuine working relationship between the two
countries.
In 2005 I relocated to DC and became a freelance art consultant. I curated my
first exhibition in the US for the 2006 ASEAN Film & Photography Festival
held at the National Geographic Society. The show, which I named "Southeast
Asia: four views and four colors" featured works by four photographers from
Brunei, Laos, Indonesia and America, who, despite their different ethnic and
cultural backgrounds, share a broad appreciation of Southeast Asian culture.
Carving out an appropriate space for the exhibition from the vast dining hall
was a challenge that I solved by using a non-conventional arrangement of the
partitions on which the works were hung. This arrangement created an illusion
whereby the partitions looked like gigantic groups of standing people, inviting
the audience to "mingle" with them, each other, and with the art, so
that every element became part of the installation and blurred the distinction
between art and reality.
As an independent art curator, my work sphere often becomes confined
by the limited access to resources and the uncertainty of financial
support. And yet, being independent enables me to work beyond physical
and spiritual restraints, and as such, I am free to travel and be more
creative in my projects. The ASEAN festival inspired my travels to
Thailand, Singapore, Taiwan and Indonesia where I discovered the diversity
of Southeast Asian cultures and its unique contemporary arts scene.
The trip opened my eyes to the integrity of traditional ways of art-making
and its universal beauty, and I have continued to broaden my research
and appreciation of Asian arts.
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