Looking for Another Family

Kang Seung Lee

Los Angeles-based artist Kang Seung Lee’s work connects the past, present, and future of the Korean Queer community. Lee explores the ways of ‘queering’ spaces through Imaginaries of the Future. He shares the exhibition space and resources with his fellow artist, who is part of the Queer community, to find the answers to the question: what is a queer perspective?

In addition to a drag show with Korean drag artist MORE, Lee displays archives of books under the category of queer with a literary critic Hyejin Oh, alongside of screenings of the video works by Korean or Korean-diaspora performers and video artists.

The project also showcases an interactive installation created in collaboration with Beatriz Cortez and the drawings inspired by a forgotten queer artist Tseng Kwong Chi. Lee deconstructs the word ‘queer’ which for many is still a new and unfamiliar term.

Tandia Permadi

Tandia Permadi is an Indonesian artist based in Bandung. Permadi utilizes art as a tool to explore ideas and identity at an innately personal level. Growing up as a boy in his household meant growing up with the ritual belief that it was a sign of bad luck to have your first child be born as a boy.

Therefore, Permadi’s family treated him as a girl. These latent memories of childhood abuse resulted in Permadi questioning his sexual identity while he was growing up. His personal experiences are intertwined with broader questions of identity politics, gender and the blurred line between sexuality and taboo. Although such issues are considered to be extremely sensitive matters in Indonesian culture, Permadi delicately handles the telling of his narrative. Many of his projects involve the documentation of his own sexual or gender-related experiences. By engaging personal voices through the discussion of his own experience in figuring out the roles of self, gender and culturally-specific gender roles, Permadi’s work raises unique and previously unanswered societal questions.

Dew Kim

Dew Kim views the concepts of ‘queerness’ and ‘gender,’ the boundaries of which become blurred as they get more fragmented and expand along a spectrum, through the lense of Shamanism. His project The Old and Wrong Way of Seeing Things (2020) adopted its title from a derogatory description of Shamanism, the beliefs and practices often associated with North Asia which used to be denigrated as the ‘black faith’ by Western people.

Ni Hao

Ni Hao's works revolve around power structures, consumerism and the aesthetics of violence by using various mediums such as sculpture and video. Growing up in post-colonial Taiwan, Hao’s experience learning in a strict and coercive educational system is visually portrayed. His works constantly provoke political metaphors or personal memories behind seemingly familiar objects.

Structure Study I explores crumpled nature disrupting the idea of any concrete definitions.

Using seemingly familiar objects like school uniforms and plastic flutes, the artist constantly provokes political metaphors or personal memories while he criticizes the imperialistic violence over the educational system he went through.

RESBAK

RESBAK is a collective group of artists, journalists and cultural practitioners. As seen in their name, which stands for ‘RESpond and Break the silence Against the Killings’, RESBAK has been formed to raise social awareness of state violence across the world. To advocate for human rights, this interdisciplinary alliance collects footage and images in the aim of portraying a brutal reality. Through their aesthetic practice, their work in this exhibition captures the cruelty of ‘death squads’ which have performed violent operations against civilians, turning the streets into an abattoir.

Through Everyday Impunity, RESBAK amplifies the voices of the voiceless and aims to empower the powerless by showing deeply affecting photos. By boldly delivering the narratives of real-life events in aesthetic forms, their work encourages the audience to question the dehumanizing norms and practices that still exist in global human culture.

South Ho Siu Nam

He lives and works in Hong Kong, where his socio-political surroundings have raised questions about living and the spirituality of existence. Hong Kong’s unique blend of cultures is captured in his work in various forms. South Ho uses photography and writing while he discovers various photographic subjects to express his viewpoint on existence in society. His artistic media include performance, drawing, and mixed media installation as well as monochrome cityscapes.

In his writing Umbrella Salad, he mentions that a simple daily interaction with strangers, whom he calls fellow beings, such as saying ‘good day’ or ‘good night’, used to provide warmth to the city where he and his family have lived for generations. However, he explains that these expressions no longer seem to exist, as spirits have fallen to the point where people have broken apart and no longer reach out to strangers. In his poetic exploration of the state of the city, he believes that there is still a persistent warmth to interactions there, but that it has now been hidden beneath an outer layer that has cooled and hardened.

98B COLLABoratory, HUB Make Lab, and KANTINA

TURO-TURO (2020) is a project co-organized by three different artist groups: 98B COLLABoratory, HUB Make Lab, and KANTINA. These groups come together to share the colloquial concept of the locality within diverse communities with a Filipino word ‘turo’, which has several different meanings, such as 'a home-cooked neighborhood eatery' and 'to point' depending on the context.

Turo-Turo is an interactive conversational piece, requiring participants to engage with art while they eat and drink. As it takes the form of an everyday activity, it expands the definition of contemporary artistic practice and coordinates a facilitated dialogue in the setting of a workshop. The artists suggest that such multi-sensory experiences illuminate hope through promoting shared cultural understanding and collective care. As humanity has faced mutual suffering in the midst of the pandemic chaos of COVID-19, the artists pose questions about the meaning of community and the role of the arts by sharing banchan (meaning ‘side dishes’ in Korean cuisine).

As humanity has faced mutual suffering in the midst of pandemic chaos of COVID-19, the artists pose questions about the meaning of community and the roles of arts by sharing food and having discussion in the carinderia.

Jatiwangi Art Factory (JaF)

This group is based in Jatiwangi. Since its establishment in 2005, JaF has hosted a number of interactive community-friendly events extending to aesthetic practices. At MMCA, JaF and Budnamugage, a group of Korean artists, explore the connection between Jatiwangi and post-war Seoul through the lens of a mountainous area of land where people have settled and built houses illegally.

Jatiwangi Art Factory(JaF) and Budnamugage see the strong connection between Seoul’s mountainous village Gaemi-maeul(literally, the ant village) and the inhabitants of Jatiwangi in Indonesia centered over the investment, the artist groups collectively present the idea with the in-museum activity called On the Way to Investment. By allowing audiences to engage with the investment process in the interactive piece, the artists try to raise awareness of the identities of both regions.

Yee I-Lann

She lives and works in Kota Kinabalu in the Malaysian Borneo state of Sabah. She has a BFA in photography and cinematography from the University of South Australia. Her photomedia-based art practice revolves around issues of culture, power and the role of historical memory in the social experience. Her aesthetic language critically interprets the controls and bureaucracy of Southeast Asian post-colonial history. Her works display an extensive and multifaceted visual vocabulary drawn from research, historical references, popular culture, archives and everyday objects.

Her aesthetic language critically interprets the controls and bureaucracy of Southeast Asian post-colonial history. The work TIKAR/MEJA (2018~2019) displays a juxtaposition of a desk, representing Western standing lifestyle, and a Malaysian locally-woven mat to reveal the binary of each function and conformation. Such contrast brings up the historical memories that now naturally blended into our lives.

Feminist Designer Social Club

Since its establishment in 2018, when it was pioneered by four designers trying to imagine and realize a new system from a feminist perspective, Feminist Designer Social Club (FDSC) has expanded to form a network for solidarity and knowledge exchange for approximately 120 designers actively working in various fields. FDSC has been actively seeking to create a new design culture led by feminists by running a podcast, various workshops, and activities. As an extension, FDSC reappropriates the power of the media, which is located at the center of the established power structures.

FDSC News, a performance to be shown at this exhibition, is an example of this. Performed on a news room set at the museum, 40 Graphic Designers You Should Know (2020) introduces the work of female graphic designers by adopting the concept of ‘news’ that delivers what ‘you should know’. FDSC believe ‘designers’ are those who rearrange and re-present existing information and resources. This challenges the existing structure of the graphic design industry in a setting where ‘performance’ as a designer’s practice and ‘performance’ in the artistic context co-exist.

Wang Tuo

By combining video clips and footage of interviews, reality shows, and theater, Wang Tuo portrays people and contemporary society in a somewhat humorous way. His practice also seeks to develop a discourse on how present ideology is derived from its historical context and continues to adapt to changing conditions.

Wang’s video work Obsessions (2019) presents a thorough tour of the Fusuijing Building – a symbolic building in Beijing in the 1950s that is the embodiment of socialist ideals – while the video tells the story of an architect who is hypnotized by a therapist. The monologue continues as the therapist guides the architect into ‘the secret chamber’ in his subconscious. The therapist explores the inside of the building, which is, in reality, half-abandoned, the ‘failed structure’ reminiscent of old ideals. The existence of the last Chamber of Secrets is revealed, and we face a certain truth, which contains the fading and meaningless of identity, such as a consistent system of thought, or an integrated social structure.