Yang Ah Ham: Adjective Life in the Nonsense Factory
March 6 – April 25, 2010
2F Art Sonje Center
Yang Ah Ham: Adjective Life in the Nonsense Factory
Yang Ah Ham has been working in the Netherlands from 2006. Ham also traveled to many areas, including the US and the Middle East. She has been working in experimental installation with various media such as video, drawing, sculpture, objects and performance. Ham has always been interested in the idea of the individual as the smallest and densest unit of life. In her installation ‘Adjective Life’, Ham tracks down individuals captured in contemporary life and places them at the boundary between documentary and fiction. In these processes, Ham sometimes works as an interviewer questioning and recording these lives of individuals, and sometimes as a director who leads narratives of documentaries or creates the unreal within a film.
Ham’s solo exhibition, ‘Adjective Life in the Nonsense Factory’ is the final LIFE trilogy project following and extending the ‘Dream…in Life’ (2004), and ‘Transit Life’ (2005) projects. In ‘Adjective Life’, Ham shows in depth perspectives towards individuals in contemporary society, which Ham calls a ‘nonsense factory’. (different fragments in a simultaneous installation formed by various mediums: video, drawing, sculpture, object and performance. These adjectives of life deal with aspects such as emotion, mystery, the image and its seduction, power and security.)
Ham’s new work, Nonsense Factory, is a story made up by the artist about a fictional factory, its surroundings and people working there. Although the factory should be a place where creativity and productivity take place, the factory is only an nonsense society where reality does not exist. people in the factory end up experiencing isolation over again despite their dreams and hopes.
Following her previous works, Ham has created new productions such as Chocolate Head and Out of Frame. Chocolate Head consists of head sculptures of renowned curators around the world and Out of Frame is a video installation that recorded performances done with the chocolate sculpture. From a distance, Ham observes the relationship between power and tensions created by this power. Pole Installation as Individual in the Society is an interactive multi-media installation which Ham has been working on since 2007. Each pole represents one individual, showing the characters, emotions and grouped ideas by using diverse devices such as sound, video, and objects. By installing a group of poles together, the artist also tries to reflect ‘individuality’ and ‘universality of contemporaries’ at the same time.
Our lives are normally defined with nouns or verbs. However, Ham discovers various ‘adjectives’ through diverse aspects of life within a society. These adjectives in life represent individual identity as well as emotions, insecurity, fantasy, desire and frustration that occur in reality or relationships with others, leading us to reflect upon myself and further define ourselves.