This monographic catalogue presents a series of works by artist Minouk Lim which draws on the tragic events of the 1950 Korean war and their aftermaths. Based on installations, sculptures, videos, and performance pieces, Lim's visual language mirrors a nation's refusal to face up with its history and initiates a reflective process to come to terms with the past.
When war broke out in Korea in 1950, the South Korean government committed a series of massacres against the civilian population. Ordered by the leader of the South Korean government, Syngman Rhee, the mass murders were intended to annihilate those who were suspected of supporting the North or been accused of being traitors that had helped the Korean People's Army. Even today, little is known about how and why these people died. Thirty years later, on May 18, 1980, people in Gwangju took to the streets to defend their country's fledgling democracy. The newly installed military regime under Doohwan Chun slanderously portrayed the protesters as communists and commanded a massacre. Again, hundreds of people were killed and thousands wounded.
The work of South Korean artist Minouk Lim (b. 1968) explores these turning points in Korean political history: events that many prefer to forget and certainly do not wish to dwell on. Lim draws on historical and political reality to develop works including installations, sculptures, videos, and performance pieces that deal with South Korea and its capital, Seoul. The artist has devised a visual language designed to put the rapid growth and development that have remade the country's face over the past decade on hold in order to initiate a process for which the German language has the peculiar word Vergangenheitsbewältigung: an effort to come to terms with the past.
Published following the eponymous exhibition at Portikus, Frankfurt am Main, from May 14 to July 5, 2015.
As an artist of many forms, Minouk Lim (born 1968, Daejeon, South Korea, lives and works in Seoul) has been creating works that are beyond the boundary of different genres and media, deepening the scope of questions while encompassing writing, sound, video, installation and performance as her means of artistic expression. Lim has been paying strong attention to the marginalization and the discrepancy generated during the process of rapid democratization and industrialization of South Korea, which also affected the lives of the many in the system of global economy. As such, Lim seeks to find ways to examine objects embedded with performativity, different methods of performance and imaginative modes of creating records. Such an inclusive approach embraces different fields of history, politics, philosophy and literature, drawing reflections on everyday life and challenging the routineness of life.
Among the numerous works created by Lim, New Town Ghost (2005), S.O.S.-Adoptive Dissensus (2009) and Portable Keeper (2009-present) are video pieces created out of performances held in non-institutional, transient sites. In the meantime, The Weight of Hands (2010) and the FireCliff series (2010-present) deliver moving images that are mediated through the lens of an infrared camera. Navigation ID was invited to the 10th Gwangju Biennale as an press opening performance and an installation in the exhibition.
