Nostalgia: East Asia Contemporary Art Exhibition, featuring works by artists of Korea, China and Japan, opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai, China, on February 18. The touring exhibition began at the Korea Foundation Cultural Center Gallery in Seoul in 2011. The Shanghai exhibition will continue through May 1.

Recalling the Past

Is the passage of time linear or circular? The debate on the human perception of time has been ongoing since ancient times. Humanity has held a diversity of notions and interpretations of time, depending on regional, religious and historical influences.

For modern-day people who are ceaselessly forced to dash forward, time seems to go by along a straight line. Those who stop for a moment to look back are bound to face criticism for being past-oriented and retrogressive. Thanks to our obsession with time, we have been able to realize the development of science and technology, and achieve miraculous economic growth. At the same time, however, we have also experienced numerous gloomy consequences of rapid economic advancement. At this juncture, what does it mean for us to remember our past that has been lost in the tides of time?

Nostalgia: East Asia Contemporary Art Exhibition, an itinerant art show jointly organized by the Korea Foundation and the Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai (MoCA Shanghai) and designed by Korean curator Kim Sun-hee, is part of the Northeast Asia Cultural Shuttle Project, which has been underway since 2007 in accordance with an agreement among the foreign ministers of Korea, China and Japan. It also marks the 20th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Korea and China.

A group of 14 artists from Korea, China, Taiwan, and Japan have contributed some 80 works to the exhibition. They include Song Hyun-sook, Won Seoung-won, Lee Ju-yong, Jung Yeon-doo and Hur Un-kyung from Korea; Duan Jianyu, Pan Jianfeng, Hai Bo, and Qiu Anxiong from China; Tu Weicheng from Taiwan; and Mako Idemitsu, Kaeko Mizukoshi, Tomoko Sawada, and Noboru Tsubaki of Japan.

Bringing Memories into Artworks

Each of the artists traces his/her memories in different ways. The 11 photo collages by Won Seoung-won, constituting a part of her Seven-Year-Old in 1978 series, attract considerable attention. When Won was young, her working mother was seldom home. Worried that her mother might not come home, the young girl used to roam around the streets to look for her mother and prepare to live on her own. Her works portray the process of her search, indicating how the artist has used art to overcome her childhood trauma.

Lee Ju-yong delves into time either accumulating or vanishing through nature as he contemplates the sea, rocks, and clouds in Red Island, Along the Riverside, and Infinity Boundary. Hur Un-kyung, who has been devoted to lacquer varnish and mother-of-pearl crafts, displays a fresh approach to evoke long ago memories with the images of barber shops and old cartoons, which were fashionable decades ago.

Tu Weicheng, the only artist representing Taiwan, crafted a handmade replica of ancient furniture with an authentic appearance. Tu is also presenting an installation work, inviting visitors to change the captions, night scenes, and images of Shanghai by adjusting the controls.

Works by Tomoko Sawada, which at first appear to portray various people in disguise, are actually the artist’s self-portrayals. In the School Days and Omiai (meaning a “match making meeting with a prospective spouse”) series, Sawada keeps transforming into completely different individuals.

Noboru Tsubaki attempts an experiment with visitors’ desires through his works featuring interior scenes of the Fukushima nuclear power plant after the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011. Against the background of the devastated power plant’s water tanks, it has a continuous cycling of project credits: visitors are invited to sign up for news about his works and those who respond will find their signature added to the credits a short time later.

Reorganizing Nostalgia

Song Hyun-sook was allegedly the first artist that curator Kim Sun-hee thought of after deciding “nostalgia” would be the exhibition’s main theme. Song depicts in her large-scale paintings the scenes of her hometown with traditional tiled-roof houses, crock pots and clotheslines. She employs ink wash techniques that she acquired through learning traditional ink wash painting and calligraphy.
Regarding his Adolescence series, dated 2010, Jung Yeon-doo explains that he tried to express “an aura-like reorganization of nostalgia lingering in an individual’s personal memory, apart from the unique ary nature of photography, to capture reality.”

Pan Jianfeng presented a large-scale installation work composed of “big mouth cups” widely used by the Chinese, exuding a familiar feeling through landscape drawings and poems.

Photographer Hai Bo looked up people in decades-old photographs and took their new photos in similar compositions, and displayed both images side by side. In some photos everyone has gathered together again, while in some others a middle-aged man is shown standing alone with all his friends gone, providing a glimpse of China’s turbulent history.

Duan Jianyu’s paintings show landscapes symbolizing scenes of nature or utopia dreamed by today’s urban dwellers. The curator commented that Duan’s works make viewers ponder deeply about fundamental aspects of man’s life.

The exhibition also features At Karuizawa, a film produced in 1978 by Mako Idemitsu, Japan’s pioneering media artist, as well as In the Wind, a film by Kaeko Mizukoshi, depicting the artist’s recollections of the tedious routine of a laborer she happened to meet during a trip and spent a whole day with.

Last but not least, Qiu Anxiong is showing a six-channel video installation titled Nostalgia. A giant insect lies dead on its side in front of the screen, symbolizing how nature has been ravaged by large industrial complexes and redevelopment projects in his home province of Sichuan.

Healing Process

Curator Kim Sun-hee has actively worked on the East Asian art scene for the past 15 years. As to her primary ive of the exhibition, she said: “Since the theme is ‘nostalgia,’ I wanted to shed new light on issues of East Asian art. Korea, China and Japan shared their cultural traditions for a long time, and they suddenly shifted over to modernism and contemporary art under the overwhelming Western influences. Through this exhibition, I wanted to provide a common arena for artists of the three countries to agonize over their current situation and search for constructive solutions.”

Nostalgia is not only about beautiful and pleasant memories; it can also be part of a sad memory that you want to erase from your mind. In this era, when human desires cause all disasters, especially one year after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, “healing” has emerged as an important issue. Artists seek to heal their past wounds through their creative endeavors and viewers take comfort from their works. This is why this exhibition, which looks back at past memories and nostalgia to discuss and share them with one another, is deemed valuable. Looking back is an act of reflecting upon our history.

Lee Kyung-min Editor
Monthly Art Magazine Wolganmisool