About the Exhibition

From the ins and outs of Yeonhui 3 street, the busy nightlife of Hongdae, and the beautiful scenic shots of the Hangang River, I have spent nearly a decade learning the culture of South Korean society through these habitual routes of mine. Growing up in a quieter part of Seoul, I was never able to grasp on to my Eastern Asian roots and feel comfortable with my new surroundings. Instead, for a long time I tried sticking to my old westernized habits and never tried to relate to the country’s food, music, style or conformity of my ancestral brothers and sisters. As I got older however, I became more aware of who I was as an individual. Despite still feeling like a ‘tourist’ in my motherland, my authentic lineage to the country allowed me to feel more open and excited than ever. Hence, The Authentic Tourist. This alter ego of mine also served as an escape from my stress and anxiety from the things that were happening in my personal life. Feeling disengaged with myself, I found that realization of the beauty of the things around me, and seeing the candid emotions of strangers in my neighborhood gave me something to grasp onto. 

My exhibition revolves around themes of youth, identity, patriotism, nostalgia, happiness, fear and love. Most of my works have a strong relationship with Korea and contain ties with East Asian cultural roots. Primarily they have to do with relating with my identity, the second chapter of my life, and the things I’ve learned or have become whilst capturing and taking photos of its visual sites; Hangang, Hongdae, Itaewon. Photography has been my main medium of choice since my freshman year of high school, and after gaining the freedom to exult that passion in my second year of DP Visual Arts, I've been able to use it at a consistent rate. For me photography isn’t necessarily a means of just taking pictures of things that are objectively ‘pretty’ or ‘aesthetically pleasing’. For me photography is more about capturing the raw essence of a moment of time that was extremely meaningful for you, and for me those happen to be candid moments of strangers walking by, or regular people living in their natural habitat. Most of my photographs have subjects and people that I have no meaningful ties with, and they’re just people that I happen to take pictures of either due to an intriguing physical quality or an off-putting aura. Each time I take a picture of these fleeting strangers, I learn more and more about the city and I’m also able to find a place where I feel most comfortable expressing my artistic point of view. 

With the space available, I wanted to show my work on a slightly bigger scale than what I was used to. Because my film is printed on a standard letter style 8.5x11cm scale, for my exhibition I wanted to blow up some of the images to a rough 1 to 2 meter scale. I thought it would be crucial to see the details and imperfections that my photographs contain, Noon Tide in particular. Furthermore My exhibition has larger pieces towards the closing edges of my corner, and smaller images towards the inside of the corner in order to emulate a closed atmosphere as you’re looking at my work. To seperate my ‘The Unexplained Thoughts of the Authentic Tourist’ series and my ‘Hangang River’ series, the Noon Tide photograph acts as a drape to separate the two projects. I wanted the separation between the two because both of the contrasting messages each project has, and the drape acts as an ‘opening door’ to my next project. 전환, or “Transition'' was my short film that I decided to include in my exhibition as one of my main pieces of art. I decided to dedicate an entire wall for a tv screen to play my film, as I thought it deserved a bigger space for the viewer not to feel claustrophobic with my other pieces.