The Yeoseong Gukgeuk Project: Hijack the Gender!
Public Programs
Discussion between the artist and the curator
Wednesday, September 6th, 2023, 4 PM
In English
Free, at the Gallery
The artist siren eunyoung jung and the curator Ji-Yoon Han invite the public to MOMENTA’s first public event taking place within the exhibition The Yeoseong Gukgeuk Project. Hijack the Gender!, a North American premiere at the Ellen Art Gallery.
The discussion will highlight a practice that uses archives, performance, and the documentary to explore nonconformity in relation to social and esthetic norms. It will also be the opportunity to situate this exhibition in relation to the curatorial vision of Masquerades: Drawn to Metamorphosis.
LIFE UNREHEARSED, 2022. A FILM BY JIEUN BANPARK
Moderated by artist and researcher Mi-Jeong Lee
Tuesday, September 26, 6 pm
In English
Free, at the Gallery
Join us on Tuesday the 26th for the film screening of Life Unrehearsed by Jieun Banpark (South Korea), as part of the Ellen’s Public Programs in conjunction with the exhibition The Yeoseong Gukgeuk Project: Hijack the Gender! by South-Korean artist siren eun young jung part of Momenta Biennale. The evening will be moderated by artist and researcher Mi-Jeong Lee.
Life Unrehearsed
Documentary | Korea, Germany | Color | 5.1ch Sound | Korean, German | 80min | 2022
Synopsis
Thirty-six years ago, Soohyun met In-sun at a Korean Christian Women’s Association retreat in Germany and gifted her flowers. Despite threats from her then-husband and the disapproval of Korean society, In-sun found love and chose to be with Soohyun. Now, the two of them—who came to work as nurses in a foreign country where they knew nothing of the language—are still there and already in their 70s. For 30 years, they have lived together in Berlin and shared in all the joys and sorrows of life. Soohyun and In-sun have stood in solidarity with other foreigners like themselves while also looking after one another. They are two people who overcame boundaries. This is their love story.
BIO
Banpark Jieun is a documentary filmmaker, producer, and visual artist based in Seoul and Berlin. Jieun makes artwork from a queer feminist perspective. Beginning with an interest in the socially marginalized and forgotten, her work exists to question socially and systemically solid notions of society that are difficult to challenge. In particular, she documents what is old and marginalized and forgotten from memory, what is culled from the race of capitalist society, and what is beautiful and useless.
Mi-Jong Lee is an artist and researcher, artistic director of Arts East-West / Korean Film Festival Canada, which she founded in 1996, and director of Asian Art Publication Lab (AAPLab), founded in 2020. Lee holds a PhD in Études et pratiques des arts from UQAM and teaches Korean visual and media arts at Université de Montréal. Her research focuses on Korean arts, Asian-Canadian diaspora arts, along with women’s studies, body, labors, environments in a gaze of aesthetics, and film philosophy.
MEDIATION ORGANIZED BY MOMENTA
Saturday, October 7th, 2023, from 1 PM to 5 PM
Free, at the Gallery
A person from the team will answer your questions or guide you through the exhibition as part of educational activities taking place at the biennal’s exhibition sites.
A MASQUERADING BODY: PERFORMED GENDER AND THE BODY IN CONTEMPORARY KOREAN ART
A talk by Camille (Ji Eun) Sung
Wednesday, October 11, at 5:30 pm
In English
Free, at the Gallery
Join us on Wednesday the 11th of October at 5:30 pm for A Masquerading Body: Performed Gender and the Body in Contemporary Korean Art, a talk by Camille (Ji Eun) Sung as part of Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery’s Public Programs in conjunction with the exhibition The Yeoseong Gukgeuk Project: Hijack the Gender! by South-Korean artist siren eun young jung part of Momenta Biennale.
If “womanliness,” or femininity, and also masculinity, is masquerade as Joan Riviere has illuminated, what is the relationship between the identity as masquerade and the body that wears the mask? In this talk, Sung discusses this question within the context of contemporary Korean art, by looking at the works of several artists, including siren eun young jung’s Yeoseong Gukgeuk Project. Contemporary Korean artists, such as Kangja Jung in the 1960s and Youngsook Park in the 1990s and 2000s, have commented on and played with femininity as a masquerade in their practice. In siren eun young jung’s works, the body—female, male, gay, or with a disability—presents itself in the process of masquerading. This creates a subtle balance with the performed gender, or identity, and leads us to reflect on the complicated relationship between the body and subjectivity.
Camille (Ji Eun) Sung is an art historian and art critic specializing in modern and contemporary Korean art and queer and feminist art. She is currently an Arts & Science Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto, working on a book project, tentatively titled “Partaking Objects in the Art, Life, and Society of Korea, 1960-1980,” which explores the aesthetics and politics of objects in relation to the artistic, economic, and socio-political circumstances at the time in Korea. She holds a Ph.D. in Art History and Theory from the University of British Columbia and worked as a curator and art critic in Seoul, Korea before coming to Canada.
siren eun young jung: The Yeoseong Gukgeuk Project: Hijack the Gender!
This series of public programs is part of the exhibition siren eun young jung: The Yeoseong Gukgeuk Project: Hijack the Gender!, as part of Momenta Biennale de l’image. Presented in gallery from September 5 to October 28, 2023.
