Minjun Shin
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Enpyeong Art Centre
30th NOV - 5th DEC 2020
Orginized - Eunpyeong Foundation for Art & Culture
Sponsored - Seoul Foundation for Arts & Culture
Credit
Producing: Jiyoung Choi(Eunpyeong Foundation for Art & Culture), Jungin Yu(Eunpyeong Foundation for Art & Culture)
Artists: Whale Kim, Dahye Kim, Hyejin Kim, Minjun Shin, Minji Jeong
Photo Documenting: Jinhyeok Wee
Design: Studio Brick
“There are objects and living beings that constitute a certain place and space. They include us. The traces that remain—or disappear—where they have passed leave fractures in time and memory. We seek to capture the utterances of beings that slip through those fissures, in the light and shadow that falls upon them.”
Invisible Lines (2020) observes and questions the entities that envelop us today—the unseen yet palpable sensations that inhabit our present. To do so, we attempted to perceive the outer structure and inner intimacies of the urban district Eunpyeong through points, lines, and planes. Rather than remaining within the dictionary meaning or conceptual frame of “link,” we focused on the images and effects the word itself generates and extended them outward. The imagery that surfaced through this process naturally began to influence one another’s work, escaping and diverging from the fixed and potentially rigid notion of “locality” as a defining code.
The exhibition, at its smallest scale, dissects what seems self-evident within the local community, and at its largest, within the world at large—paradoxically revealing the inner layers of the place that exists here and now. The reconstructed fragments of our records become points that touch and connect, forming countless lines. Depending on the gaze, these perceptual lines appear or disappear, ultimately resisting the abstraction of “we are all connected,” and instead taking form as concrete scenes—encounters between the viewer and the present moment.
Research Note
In 2020, I participated in a local culture research and presentation project in collaboration with a public institution in Eunpyeong, the neighborhood where I lived. The project unfolded as a process-based program that combined field research with seminars led by local experts. However, the discussions in these seminars always drifted toward positive narratives, inevitably concluding that “the Eunpyeong community is vibrant and healthy.” Yet there was a generational gap of thirty to forty years between myself and the instructors, and my experience diverged sharply from theirs.
I had settled in Eunpyeong simply because it offered affordable housing near my university. I was living in a semi-basement apartment, and as a newcomer rather than a native resident, I had no connection to any local community. In truth, Eunpyeong meant nothing more to me than a place to sleep.
As the exhibition deadline approached, I still had no clear sense of what to make. One day, while walking, I came across a banner hung by a local apartment community protesting the government’s youth housing policy. In that moment, I began to question all the optimistic narratives I had heard. That encounter led me to start collecting banners and slogans that visually revealed the tensions and conflicts within the neighborhood. On top of these public utterances, I juxtaposed symbolic emblems of the district—objects that artificially evoke a sense of long-standing identity.
It is often assumed that art engaging the public sphere should aim to “do good.” Yet, for the sake of a more genuine community, sometimes we must also be ready to make conflict visible.