Hyewon Kwon's video-based installations begin with research, excavating what remains of the unknowable or unrecorded memories of a place. Traces of reality mingle with fiction in Kwon's work, giving rise to an imaginary space with unpredictable narratives.
Read MoreKwon graduated with a BFA from Korea National University of Arts and went on to receive her MFA from the Slade School of Art, London, in 2006. She received a PhD from the University of Reading in 2018.
Filmed at the sites of her research, Hyewon Kwon's videos feature voiceovers or on-screen texts that narrate plausible stories of the places depicted. They are part fact and part fiction, reflecting the artist's greater interest in historicisation and modes of retelling the past.
Kwon's longstanding concern in the intersection of the past and narrative can be found in earlier works such as Living Archive (2009–2010), a video revolving around the stories of ordinary people who lived in private to the point that only administrative records, such as birth certificates, prove their existence. Inside their homes, however, are personal objects and memories that they accumulated over time as individuals, which the artist researched and employed in her works to reconstruct their lives.
Spaces with unrecorded or censored histories are recurring subjects in Kwon's videos. Eight Men Lived in the Room – News (2011) focusses on one such place that could almost have been imaginary: a three-storey boarding house for workers that was established in 1961 in Yeongdeungpo District of Seoul. Curiously, no official records of the site remain at the National Archives of Korea following the completion of the building. The black-and-white video, broken into short snippets in chronological order, reveals that the place became embroiled in ominous accidents and murder that led, ultimately, to its demolition in 1999—perhaps the reason for the Archives potentially glossing over its history.
Memory Museum – Guro (2016) takes a site that still exists as a subject of research: Seoul Art Space Geumcheon, where Kwon undertook an artist's residency in 2014. The vertical video opens with the scene of a barley field and poses the question, 'Whose land is it?', to narrate a series of anecdotes about a farmer whose family land was confiscated by the military in the 1980s; a bookkeeper-turned-financial-director of a cable factory; a body worker who dies from mercury poisoning; and a secretive printing plant. These seemingly unrelated stories, told through texts and alternating footage of dark interiors, are connected by their site that eventually became the art space.
Kwon was awarded the 19th SongEun Art Award (2020) for video installations Landscape of Ghosts and Monsters and Tenderly more Tenderly (2019), both of which were inspired by a lava tube in Jeju Island.
Landscape of Ghosts and Monsters launches an investigation into the ancient past of the cave, before humanity, that eventually intertwines with known human histories, such as the stories of people who took refuge in the cave to avoid mass killings by the South Korean government in 1948. Tenderly more Tenderly expands from Landscapes of Ghosts and Monsters, incorporating acrylic panels into the installation to create forms that merge into or emerge out of one another.
Hyewon Kwon has shown her works in solo and group exhibitions.
Solo exhibitions include: The Manual for the Invisible Projectionist, Post Territory Ujeongguk, Seoul (2018); Chosen Tour Project: Keijo, Gallery Bonun, Seoul (2013); Vietnam Memoir, Cyart Gallery, Seoul (2012); Eight Men Lived in the Room, Gallery K, Seoul (2012).
Group exhibitions include: Aqua Paradise, Asia Culture Center, Gwangju (2022); Archived Memories, Seoul Museum of Art (2022); Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art (2021); Garden of Imagination, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Deoksugung, Seoul (2021); The 19th SongEun ArtAward Exhibition, Songeun Art Space, Seoul (2020); Today, Nobody was There, art space pool, Seoul (2018); 2016 NANJI ART SHOW VI: As is, Seoul Museum of Art (2016).
In 2023, Hyewon Kwon was announced as one of 13 artists chosen for the Korean Artists Abroad programme supported by Korea Arts Management Service.
Hyewon Kwon's website can be found here.
Sherry Paik | Ocula | 2023
