Hong Lee, Hyun-Sook: Swoosh, Tsu-pu!

Since the mid-2000s, Arko Art Center has been organizing exhibitions supporting new works by mid-career Korean artists, intending to provide an environment for them to continue their art practice. This year, the museum presents Hong Lee, Hyun-Sook (b. 1958), who uses various media, such as performance, video, and installation, to produce works that discuss the free, independent body that resists the patriarchal society and gaze. She has been recognized as a leading artist in the history of Korean feminist art.

Another reason why Arko Art Center has paid attention to Hong Lee is her experimental curatorial events and projects, which bring those overlooked by the social structure into the realm of art and make them visible. In many public art projects, the artist contemplates the places that are outdated and no more visible and their residents’ lives. She has presented projects where her own body or fellow artists ̕ works expand the voice of social minorities. These projects were done in many different locations, and they were open to everyone.

The exhibition Swoosh, Tsu-pu! is an extension of her older works that highlight solidarity and cooperation. It deals with non-human animals as the central theme, imagining and striving to live in symbiosis with them. The exhibition is in line with Ecofeminism, which aims to free nature from the human-centered dualism and stand in solidarity with it. The show also reflects the artist’s contemplation on materializing the sense of a new world, which one hasn’t experienced until now.

In the unusual exhibition title Swoosh, Tsupu!, the word “swoosh” may sound like the wind moving and “tsu-pu” like something thrown onto the surface of water. “Tsu-pu” is Quechuan (the language of South American natives), functioning like an onomatopoeia or ideophone, such as “flop” or “splish splash.” Unlike human languages that require one to understand a particular society or culture to speak, these mimetic words, added with gestures explaining the situation and different sounds, can mediate the communication despite boundaries among different beings. With this title Swoosh, Tsu-pu!, the artist hopes to avoid limited languages or ways of thinking to define or judge other beings, including humans and non-human animals. She tries to be in an equal position with them to exchange views. She encourages one to reject the narrow-minded idea of just blaming humans and sympathizing with non-human animals and open their five senses to perceive and understand each other.

The exhibition invokes whales whose songs transcend the human hearing range and cats that stay in the redevelopment area̕s alleyways and tolerate human affection and hatred. The artist imagines being able to swim and fly with them in a space where we human beings and they come together. Moreover, she helps us see that their suffering is the crisis that we face.

Between co-destruction and coexistence, the present is at risk; therefore, one cannot even dare to visualize their future in this New-Normal period. Despite the possibilities of failures, Hong Lee uses her artistic imagination to open the door to a new kind of solidarity and coexistence with all beings, including humans.

*The word “tsu-pu” is from Eduardo Kohn’s book How Forests Think (Supeun Saenggakanda, trans. Cha Eunjeong, Aprilbooks, 2018).

Artist Interview
Online Exhibition