This exhibition brings together two major works: Five Acts (2024/2025)—featuring a circular embroidered tapestry, sculptures resembling animal toys, and five live performances—and Accidental Paradise (2025), a newly commissioned sound installation. Together, they draw attention to voices that have long been pushed to the margins.

Five Acts begins with overlooked stories from Korea’s modern and contemporary history of women’s labor, revealing that women’s bodies and labor have never been peripheral – even as their stories have long been excluded from dominant historical narratives centered on male heroes. Figures such as Hyun Kyeok, a former gisaeng turned independence activist; Bu Chunhwa, a haenyeo who led anti-Japanese protests in Jeju; and Shin Soonae, a leader in the Cheonggye Garment Workers’ Union, are among those whose struggles Hong brings into focus. Key moments from these histories are embroidered onto a 40-meter-long tapestry, offering a charged site of rupture—a surface for activation, brought to life through five performances held during the course of the exhibition.

On the inner side of the tapestry, abstract and geometric shapes are embroidered on hemp fabric. These forms are inspired by the petroglyphs of Bangudae Terrace in Cheonjeon-ri, Uljoo, where elements of nature—wind, clouds, and the sun—are carved into stone. These shapes are echoed in handcrafted sculptures made of willow, fabric, and ceramic, creating a rhythmic visual language throughout the space. Inspired by animal behavior enrichment tools observed in a zoo, the sculptures resemble playground equipment like hoops or ring tosses. During performances, they serve as instruments and props, enabling performers to respond to embroidered scenes and compose new gestures in the sensory present. A drummer accompanies them, improvising rhythms guided by animal-shaped scores stitched along the lower edge of the tapestry.

Installed in a darkened room, Accidental Paradise is a sound installation in which a monologue by the artist is translated and recited in the voice of a crane. The artist’s voice was analyzed into thirteen tonal qualities and paired with over a thousand crane vocalizations, creating a hybrid chorus where human and nonhuman voices converge. The artist was drawn to the crane not only for its symbolic status as an endangered species, but also for its social nature and the way it emits multiple voices when in groups. Recalling her first encounter with a crane in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), the artist attempts to intersect the presence of the crane with her own—bridging the two through a shared sensory and imaginative space. In this exhibition, tapestry, sound, and performance are fluidly interwoven. Resisting linear narratives and vertical structures of authority, Hong offers an egalitarian field in which history is sensed through embodied gestures, rhythmic activations, and sonic transformations. Here, stories of resistance do not disappear—they wait, pulsing beneath the surface, until bodies, rhythms, and voices bring them back to life.

Performance
*The performance is open for participation without reservation.
5/8 (Thu) 6pm
5/24 (Sat) 2pm
6/14 (Sat) 2pm
6/28 (Sat) 2pm
7/12 (Sat) 2pm

About the Artist
Young In Hong (b. 1972)
Young In Hong works across a variety of media and formats, including tapestry, sound, and performance. Through her practice, the artist seeks to dissolve rigid hierarchical structures by creating diverse relationships within her work, paying close attention to the voices of those pushed to the margins. Her solo exhibitions include Five Acts (Spike Island, 2024), Animal Rings (Kunsthal Extra City, 2022), Play on the Moon (Korean Cultural Centre UK, 2017), and 6/50 fig-2 (ICA Studio & Theatre, 2015). She has also participated in major group exhibitions at Secession (2024), Changwon Sculpture Biennale (2024), National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Deoksugung (2024), Museum of Contemporary Art Busan (2023), Art Tower Mito (2023), Seoul Museum of Art (2022), Asia Culture Center (2020), and Turner Contemporary (2017). Hong was selected as a sponsored artist for the MMCA Artist of the Year program in 2019 and has received the Kim Sejoong Sculpture Award (2011) and the Suknam Art Award (2003). Her works are part of public collections including the Arts Council Collection (UK), Karolinska Institutet, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Korea), Seoul Museum of Art, and Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art.