Chimères interstitielles

The ‘Interstitial Chimeras’ exhibition features 3 Korean artists based in Seoul, Paris and Brussels. They have accumulated a wealth of experience in the societies in which they live. Yet their work and research remain in tune with the culture that nurtured them.
‘Interstitial Chimeras’ seeks to show how identity evolves as a function of place, and how cultural and societal references are reflected in their work.
The exhibition by these 3 artists, linked by their country of origin, seeks to draw attention to the richness of their inner identity as opposed to the outer identity attributed to them. In doing so, they offer us a glimpse into a heterogeneous universe.

Min Shin lives and works in Seoul. She questions how a societal problem can be translated into visual art. Min Shin evokes the injustice systematised in Korean society.
Using the ‘papier mâché’ technique, Min Shin modulates female figurines and reinforces this fragile, crumpled material with graphite pencil drawings. These round, naive figures bear an angry expression. Shin denounces the way in which the female body is perceived in Korean society and elsewhere. The deliberately chosen ugliness serves to turn this alienating view on its head. They are not there to be looked at, but to look. By reversing the gaze, they regain their dignity.

Sunyoung Choi, who has adopted Brussels as her home, has turned the ‘Rorschach Test’, which consists of assessing personality traits based on what subjects perceive from inkblots, on its head. As if to quantify visual performance, Choi arranges her inkblots in the manner of an optometric chart. The cohabitation of these two tests gives rise to a kind of nonsense, and reveals the absurdity of trying to quantify, classify and find a logic of cause and effect.
In his other piece, Entomology, these inkblots are cut out and then pinned up. Choi relates mental images, often perceived as moving and furtive, to flying insects, like an insect collection in which specimens are organised according to their characteristics. In her work, she sketches out the desperate desire of human beings to catch, define and freeze the elusive and unpredictable.

Hana Kim explores the world of plants that exist outside limits and boundaries, and more specifically the plants that we find in urban spaces and that we commonly refer to as ‘weeds’.
The plant world, and weeds in particular, grow in the interstices between the elements. They develop their singularity, but off-centre. Both inside and outside the exhibition space, Kim uses a variety of media to explore the visible and invisible movement of plants and the various aspects of their expansion.

Curated by Jihye Choi

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