Art Sonje Center is presenting 2018 Art Sonje Project #3: Yi Yunyi – CLIENT from May 3 to June 3, 2018. By recording one’s history through an “Oral History” by various speakers, this exhibition attempts to traverse the world and “time and space” that are dichotomized into the concept of “me” versus “others”. Unlike written history and information, oral history is based on subjective recollections and experiences, which presumes a “listener” and “present.” Oral history is relationship-oriented, yet it is also a variable form of storytelling in which the speaker’s memories may be unclear or distorted by personal emotions. Characters in the video take prophetic dreams and past life reading as their form of storytelling among the different types of oral histories. Through this approach, the exhibition asks questions of reciprocality, replicability, and autonomy (passivity) of relationships.
Yi’s latest video work, Shine Hill (2018) seeks to embody the world of the unconscious through the precognitive dreams and past life readings of two women in their thirties working at the Shine Hill Golf Club in Yongin, a city in Korea’s Gyeonggi Province. Having met for the first time at a temple, the two women share subjective memories of having seen each other previously in dreams, a connection through which they have come to work together, live together, and share similar visions. Meanwhile, a famous past life reader delivers a reading and interpretation to explain the reasons behind the bonds and conflicts of family members who run a local driving range. Their home and workplace show signs of religious belief, meditative lifestyles, and an inclination to superstition, which underpin their sense of unity. The black box where the video is shown also functions as a kind of installation. A hill-like structure that is similar to the shape of golf course is built in the screening room. It connects the screen to seats for the audience and extends the narrative of the work—which is a mixture of fiction and reality to the space.
Words of the Ear (2018), is an installation consisting of two pillars. They were designed to replicate pillars already existing in the exhibition hall. These (phantom) pillars are made with a mixture of unorthodox materials. They refuse to exist as functioning objects. Instead, they stand as monuments of the uncertainty and undefined situation that the whole exhibition refers to. These strange pillars, which are made with transparent and opaque materials, support the narrative and structure of the Shine Hill (2018), which encompasses the concurrent concepts of past/future, fact/fiction, speaker/listener, and completed/open state of events. In addition to the pillars, installations made of reflectors in different shapes are placed throughout the space. With their “folded ears,” they function to constantly disrupt the light, the language, and the context.

About the Artist
Yi Yunyi produces video works that are often mixtures of sound, image, and text. She also experiments with various media such as installations, performances, and artist books. Most of her works deal with subjects of feminine speaking/writing, the synchronicity of contradicting perceptions, and the multi-layered memories of people in their response to one particular place. Yi Yunyi studied Korean Poetry in Creative Writing department at the Seoul Institute of the Arts and earned her BFA and MFA in Combined Media from the Studio Art department at Hunter College in New York. She had her first solo exhibition, A Round Turn and Two Half-Hitches at Insa Art Space in 2014. She also participated in several group shows, such as Push, Pull, Drag (2016) at Platform-L Contemporary Art Center, Wellknown Unknown (2016) at Kukje Gallery and Floating and Sinking (2015) at Gallery Factory. Her video works were also shown at places such as Anthology Film Archives in New York, Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami, and Vox Populi in Philadelphia.

▶ Artist Talk: Yi Yinyi
26 May, Sat, 2018, 4 pm
Hanok, Art Sonje Center
Moderator: Haeju Kim(Deputy Director, Art Sonje Center)