「SPACE(공간)」 2026년 6월호 (통권 703호)
Exhibition view of ‘Asia, The Apparatus’
On Mar. 19, the exhibition ‘Asia, The Apparatus’ opened at the National Asian Culture Center. This exhibition evokes the memories and communal narratives of Asia – a region characterised by diverse identities and histories – through experimental films, video art, and moving images by 31 Asian experimental filmmakers and video artists. At the centre of the exhibition stands a three-storey circular structure reminiscent of a panopticon. Here, videos that capture the narratives of Asian women, histories of various nations, and the social injustices, sufferings, and ostracised lives outside the institutional framework of Korean society of the 1980s are displayed—including videos related to the May 18 Democratization Movement. Notably, this exhibition has significant art-historical value in that it features the unreleased work 3mirrors (1975) by director Han Okhi who led the ‘Khai Du Club’ (Korea’s first women’s experimental film collective), and the storyboards and unfinished video White Dust From Mongolia (1980) by Hak Kyung Cha who was a pioneer in feminist, postmodernist, and postcolonial art discourse. On the other hand, Listen to the City’s Texture of Street (2023) and City of Oblivion (2022) intuitively capture a cross-section of contemporary society and display issues regarding mobility rights for people with disabilities and gentrification in the Cheonggyecheon Stream and Euljiro regions. ‘Poster as Cinematography’ by Aprilsnow which is presented in a separate section is also eye-catching. Here, 19 designers (teams) present experimental films in poster format, exploring the possibilities for visual language. Furthermore, the exhibition uses works by various artists – including Nguyen Trinh Thi, Maryam Tafakory, and Bong Joonho – as a device for collaging past histories, senses, and layers of memory within the Asian community. The exhibition runs until Sep. 27.
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