Anne Duk Hee Jordan: The End Is Where We Start From

KunstHausWien is delighted to announce Anne Duk Hee Jordan. The End Is Where We Start From, the artist’s first solo exhibition in Austria, which will be on view from September 11, 2024–January 26, 2025. 

Curator: Barbara Horvath

“What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.”

These lines by T. S. Eliot from Little Gidding, the final poem, published in London in 1942, of the Four Quartets series, are the inspiration for the eponymous title of Anne Duk Hee Jordan’s exhibition in Vienna. The End Is Where We Start From delineates a cyclical movement that is inscribed in the exhibition space both thematically and physically. “We are deeply connected with everything around us,” emphasizes the artist, “and to understand ecology we must think in continuous cycles.”

Developed specifically for the KunstHausWien, the multisensory exhibition presents two worlds on two levels: starting from the Archean Eon, when the first life arose on the Earth thanks to an oxygen-rich atmosphere, the scenery transforms into a magical fluorescing underwater world that enables visitors to plunge to the depths of an ocean populated by fantastic creatures and microscopically tiny phytoplankton.

Anne Duk Hee Jordan intentionally interleaves scientific knowledge with poetic imagination, links organic nature with Romantic visions of technology, merges the human with the nonhuman, and in this way creates an artistic universe imbued with a profound sensibility for ecological and social issues. In multimedia works set under and above water, nature is never just a “feel-good landscape” but a dynamic ecosystem shaped and pervaded by transiency, recovery, and new beginnings.
Anne Duk Hee Jordan’s pluralistic way of seeing and inherently collective spirit forge vital paths for establishing relationships with nature and time, with ourselves and others. These paths are a welcome encouragement for all those who feel powerless in the face of the climate crisis.

As the first Green Museum in Austria, Kunst Haus Wien follows the vision of its founder Friedensreich Hundertwasser and explores the relationship between humans, art, and ecology. Anne Duk Hee Jordan’s exhibition takes a new approach and emphasizes the confrontation with a “different environment” as a sensual experience.  

Publication
The first bilingual German-English monograph on the artist, will bring together pivotal aspects of Anne Duk Hee Jordan’s work. The authors—Pauline Doutreluingne, Barbara Horvath, Chus Martínez, Clara Runge, Ursula Ströbele, and James Voorhies—engage with the artist’s specific approach and working method from different perspectives. These insights are complemented by excerpts from relevant texts in the fields of literature, philosophy, cultural theory, and the natural sciences, in particular texts by Astrida Neimanis and Christoph Cox.

Edited by Barbara Horvath, KunstHausWien GmbH 
Published by Hirmer Verlag, Munich: Anne Duk Hee Jordan: The End Is Where We Start From

Biography
Anne Duk Hee Jordan, born in 1978 in Korea, lives and works in Berlin. The artist studied at the Weissensee Academy of Art, Berlin, and subsequently completed a Master of Fine Arts at the Institut für Raumexperimente, Berlin. Anne Duk Hee Jordan is a professor of digital media art at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design in Germany.

Selected solo and group exhibitions: Humming Chorus, Nam June Paik Art Center, Seoul (2024), Snailing (Slippy slimy slug slut), Canal Projects, New York (2024); (A)I Tell You, You Tell Me. Three Encounters for Humans/Machines, ZKM Karlsruhe (2024); I will always weather with you, The Bass, Miami Beach (2023–24); Liquid Intelligence, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid (2023); RE/SISTERS: A Lens on Gender and Ecology, Barbican Art Gallery, London (2023)