Artist Kim Sung-hwan is a research-oriented artist based in Hawaii who digs into history, migration and boundaries. His first solo exhibition at a public museum in Korea, the Seoul Museum of Art, offers an opportunity to consider a specific site through layers of time.
The exhibition "Ua a‘o ‘ia ‘o ia e ia" at the Seoul Museum of Art unfolds across three rooms, starting with migration narratives that unpack modern and colonial histories.
Figures of different sizes stand in the first gallery, each looking in a different direction. The five-part installation “Figure Complex” is a reconstituted landscape of Hawaii composed of minor historical figures from the 20th century to the present who have called Hawaii home, such as Korean independence activist Helen Ahn (1884-1969), who followed her husband Dosan Ahn Chang-ho (1878-1938) to Hawaii in the early 1900s and remained in the US after his death.
The exhibition is not limited to what the artist has created: Kim has brought historical documents and works by other artists to complement the show.
"The artist clearly cites the sources for the documents he presents here,” said curator Park Ga-hee at the museum on Wednesday. “He considers what he delivers to the audiences through his own visual language is important, but he also enjoys presenting historical documents and their sources as he is interested in how history is delivered.”
Films provided by the grassroots filmmaking team kekahi wahi -- titled “Ho’oulu Hou,” “Artist Conversation Na Maka o ka 'Aina,” “Artist Conversation Piliamo’o” and “Artist Conversation Elepaio Press” -- are screened in a separate room. The films cover historical, cultural and political issues of Hawaii and the Pacific Islands working with local communities to document and preserve cultural heritage and the Native Hawaiian spirit.
Next to the films is Kim’s collage drawing “Poor Kolea counts na po mahina,” consisting of a series of superimposed human and bird forms. The figures in the drawing are based on the Golden Plover, known in Hawaii as Kolea, meaning “one who takes and leaves.” The bird summers in Alaska and flies to Hawaii for the winter and is considered a messenger of the Hawaiian chiefs. For others, the phonetics of kolea immediately call to mind the country of Korea.
The artist has paid attention to Hawaii as both a concept and a specific geographical location where large-scale industrial plantations flourished with the introduction of countless overseas laborers, according to the museum.
"We can also carry meanings from one place to another by highlighting similar elements between the two through metaphor. It is insightful to juxtapose two cultures through cross-analogy rather than through excavation or translation. One can be both the metaphor and the origin of the other, and vice versa," the artist said.
The exhibition runs through March 30.
