September 5 – October 28, 2023
The Yeoseong Gukgeuk Project: Hijack the Gender!
siren eun young jung
Curator: Ji-Yoon Han
As part of MOMENTA Biennale de l’image’s 2023 edition:
Masquerades: Drawn to Metamorphosis
The exhibition is made possible thanks to the support of the Korean Cultural Centre Canada, the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sport and Tourism, the Korea Arts Management Service, and the Fund for Korean Art Abroad.
For jung’s first solo exhibition in North America, the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery presents her 15 years of research, dedicated to the Yeoseong Gukgeuk Project (2008 – ongoing). From an openly political perspective, the artist explores how deviation from the norm has been lived and felt within the context of Korean culture. jung’s videos and filmed performances show the aging bodies of Yeoseong Gukgeuk’s original female actors, some of whom have since passed away, applying their makeup, telling their stories, sifting through old photographs of themselves, acting out long-dormant scenes for the camera, playfully re-perform their “man-making” techniques based on the established typology of the hero, the joker, and the villain.
For jung’s first solo exhibition in North America, the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery presents her 15 years of research, dedicated to the Yeoseong Gukgeuk Project (2008 – ongoing). From an openly political perspective, the artist explores how deviation from the norm has been lived and felt within the context of Korean culture. jung’s videos and filmed performances show the aging bodies of Yeoseong Gukgeuk’s original female actors, some of whom have since passed away, applying their makeup, telling their stories, sifting through old photographs of themselves, acting out long-dormant scenes for the camera, playfully re-perform their “man-making” techniques based on the established typology of the hero, the joker, and the villain.
siren eun young jung
siren eun young jung makes work that explores the subversive potential of popular cultural practices and highlights the existence of communities that, to this day, maintain spaces for dissimilarity and non-conformity within a given society. Since 2008, the South Korean artist has been involved in a long-term project on Yeoseong Gukgeuk—literally “the traditional women’s theatre.” From documentary research to conducting interviews with the protagonists and witnesses of the time, from the constitution of archives to the performative exploration of the exhibition space and theatre, from collaboration to co-creation with LGBTQ+ communities, jung has contributed significantly to the recognition of Yeoseong Gukgeuk.
Masquerades: Drawn to Metamorphosis
Designed by curator Ji-Yoon Han, Masquerades: Drawn to Metamorphosis aims to explore the dynamics of visibility and invisibility that shape representations of the self and the other from the metamorphic potentials of mimicry. The exhibitions, the publication, and the public programs will be organized around this theme. Like a parade, the exhibitions form a sequence of surprising scenarios: humans who converse through mimicking parrots; a cephalopod that sways to the music of Whitney Houston; people with a complex about singing who form a choir; a scorpion, a bat, and a snake who unite their voices in a satirical musical comedy; and more.