Proposed name (can be something else~): It Ended When You Said Goodbye/ An Impression that Isn't
_is a collaboration project to bury the impression and personal struggles of artist who are in a state of mobility studying in a place far away from their home, with a specific focus on a fragile identity.Through the absurd they observe in everyday life, they explore how cultural difference and how it interferes with individual perceptions of the self. Travel routes, political and social violence, and a revisiting of personal biographies would be the line transcending the project. Three artists from China, Hong Kong and South Korea would bury personal mementos such as letters, diaries, books, housewares along and bring in their own histories, circumstances, and geographies through a secondary narration. Burying personal items as a starting point, the artists take turn to narrate the stories of another, to present a very personal narrative, oscillating between the fictional and the real with the aim of remembering a moment, or fragments of a moment, that seems never be able to say goodbye.
Entitled It Ended When You Say Goodbye, this exhibition takes its name from the lyrics in the song The End of the World by Skeeter Davis (1962).
Jessie: Last time I mentioned about food in Hong Kong, but Hannah also suggested personal stuff like the cotton thing. After going back home, I realized that impression of the west may not be that important to me but my fragile identity and emotion that I have been facing.
I always struggle to be good but also admit that I can be bad. There is an ideal me, a reality me and me in my mind. The "me in my mind" is also inconfident, and guilty for everything. Sometimes I am scared of people who are good at getting something, but my therapist told me it is because I think I am bad and I hate myself that I am scared of others. She suggested me to make some drawings about I am good enough.
However, some weeks before, I had the idea of burning off the statements about me as a good person. I have the idea in my mind I want to burn a statement of "I am smart", "I am a good artist", etc...I wonder if it would make any difference.
We want to find some points that we are the same but not the same (culture, experience, etc.)—— Combing personal history—— Time capsule—— Bury( Not necessarily in the garden or buried in reality, we can find different forms)——
Yu: Items, memories, impressive
Osmanthus tree, sheets:A memory of collective life
Chinese cabbage(My mother loves eating Chinese cabbage when she is pregnant, so she always tells me that I love Chinese cabbage, but I have no impression. Later in 1998, there was a particularly big flood in Wuhan. I remember the soldiers rowing boats to deliver Chinese cabbage to my house. A year ago I came to the Netherlands and saw Chinese cabbage in the market. I realized that it was prefixed with China abroad. It came here through the mountains and rivers like me. Now I find that I really love Chinese cabbage.)
Photo and the cake:I ate the jelly cake in a very western children’s paradise. It felt like my first impression or imagination of the West
Jessie:
the food in Hong Kong,West Toss,coffee milk tea?
cooking show
cotton
Hanna:
Troop pan? fried chicken
From leaving Korea to coming to Holland, the letters, notes, invitations, etc. she collected
relationship
refrigerator
Yu:
Snow peas (Chinese/ Dutch)
Changing identities with each other, role-playing to tell stories about objects, etc.
Yang-Ha refrigerator is quite funny because it contains not only food but also letters. She is collecting letters from staying in the Netherlands. Not to forget them (she said "I a pretty shattered person"), she has decided to put everything on the refrigerator standing in her kitchen. For around one year, her refrigerator is full of intimacy with people; Korean friends giving good-bye and good-luck messages on the new stage, her mom encouraging her to have a great time in another world and telling her that she always believes me, boyfriend's parents celebrating the last Christmas and her new friends letting me new affections. As seeing her letterbox, refrigerator, she can notice she has built invaluable connections. At the same time, she is making new associations in Groningen.
Whenever I left Seoul, my mama writes a short notes on
Yu:The objects I am interested in are more like fragments salvaged by the past time. In the time that keeps moving forward, they always lose their context. When viewed by strange audiences, they reinvent their own history time and time again.