Ambivalent World for Healing (Lee, Moonjung)

Most of the audience who first meet Hyun Joo's work get to have feelings of wariness and tension. The chief reason for that lies in the expression of the body showing somewhat bluntly. The woman who exposes private parts, the naked woman who has her lower body or head cut off, the colony of which is reminiscent of a part of body, the woman who puts her body into a mould, which arouse suspicion that it is sado-masochism, and the utensils-still working-that seem to be for sexual stimulation, narrowly overstep the limit of taboo. It is obvious that Hyun Joo's works include the images and media uncomfortable to display or to be seen in public place. And therein lies the body of human being-woman, a completely taboo object.

Hyun Joo has concentrated on the body since she has buried herself in her expressing of the traces of physical and mental memory. According to the artist, as thought is connected to the body, and the sense of body to emotion, body and mind, and emotion are linked up as one. Civilization, however, separates the two as irrelevant things. Thus the artist throws metaphysical and physical questions and doubts about universality, and simultaneously proposes the penetration of boundaries. The artist believes that the very body experiences the structure and relations of the world and embodies all of philosophy and mind. The body represents the identity of a human being. Human beings live with their bodies. and experience and respond to the world with their bodies. The body expresses social values and is subjected to those values, but resists and leaps over them at the same time.

The artist began with works to expose the physical traces and experiences of body left by things like corset and pointed high heels pressurizing the body. She soon expanded her domain to the works inspiring feelings and imaginations in order to express not only the traces left on the surface of the body but also deep inside of the body, and it led to the creation of the world of ambivalence that crosses all boundaries. The final destination of the artist who came into the ambivalent world is the realization of healing. Her seemingly provocative works are not for provocation at all but for holistic healing. All beings in the world have ambivalent properties. The human body and sense, mind, and the human's creation can hardly be free from ambivalence. Human beings get the fate of death just as they get life. Humans hate while loving, and destroy while creating. They make taboos and simultaneously desire and violate them, and obey and defy them. The society we live, however, still divides the existence and value of the world with dichotomous thinking, and humans feel hurt in the course. Hence, Hyun Joo thinks that a true healing can be done when we accept the ambivalence, the most candid feature of the world, and break through the man-made demarcations.

The <0.03> series and the <Mould> series in this exhibition show the artist's perspective condensed. Among them, <0.03> series, which is made in relief and vollplastik, are the works that cast in stainless steel after filling the Okamoto condoms with polyethylene and then hardening them. However, despite the use of condoms, typical male goods, as media, finished products have the form of female breast-very realistically felt. These artworks, which remind Helen Chadwick's Piss flowers (1991-1992) that shows the reversal of sexual symbols with the casting of shape of holes in the snow after man and woman pee respectively, subvert at once the conventional and universal stereotypes about sexual identity. Afterwards the <0.03> series evolve into the colony of multiple objects and are transformed into Mother goddess with many breasts, a personification of fertility and nurture. It is that masculine symbol is converted into feminine symbol. Meanwhile, <oo>-'oo' is the artist's sign symbolizing ovum-a woman's picture wearing a colony of <0.03> sculpture on her head, is reminiscent of Medusa. Medusa's hair, i.e. snake is the animal symbolizing male sex organs. Sigmund Freud also interpreted Medusa's hair as the symbol of female sex organs, and petrified man as a metaphor for desire or fear of the man who feels after seeing the female sex organs. Therefore, it will not be coincidental that <oo> reminds us of Medusa representing the coexistence of femininity and masculinity and the property of ambivalence.

The <0.03> series-the others too-in fact, seem to comprise, in many ways, intersection of the works done by 1970's feminists who seek operational essentialism. In that shape, it also resonates with Louise Bourgeois, Nancy Azara, and Betsy Damon. But Hyun Joo's eyes are not focusing on only women. To interpret her works as feminist work is to define too restrictively. As mentioned earlier, the key point of her work is to confirm the ambivalence existing in the world and to penetrate the boundaries dividing the world, for healing. Condom is the thing that covers man's skin, but it meets woman's skin as well. It is in the borderline that touches both man's body and woman's body. That is, the artist does not choose the condom and the women's breast as material in order to highlight the body(korperlichkeit) and visualize woman's desire on which has been placed a taboo. I'll bet, <0.03> is the work for the restoration of relationship and heeling.

The <Mould> series can also be understood in the same vein. This work is done with casting of outer surface of mould made in life casting. In other words, it is not a casting of a human body but of a mould, and it can be said that it is imagery of unseen boundaries existing between human beings and the world. Hyun Joo's moulds are, moreover, not the means to make a independent image but to wrap the body. To borrow the artist's words, the <Mould> series have a meaning as the process that cures inside of oneself. That's to say, <Mould> is a shield and a cocoon functioning as a temporary boundary, and a incubator for growth. It equates to a suit of armor protecting from spears, and a thimble facilitating sewing and protecting our fingers. At the same time, it is a bandage or plaster for wound treatment. And it is a transitional space consoling the beings who are not ready yet to go to the world. But, <Mould> is not the space to stay forever. You should get out again, when the tide serves. Because you can not stay hidden in there all your life. The moulds the artist produced always cover a part of the body, which is also to show that the relations between the world and beings can never be severed. Beings can never be cut off from other beings and the world. The only space which is entirely severed is a coffin after death. In this sense, the artist may be likened to a butterfly that spins its cocoon to develop into an imago and emerge itself from that.

Then again, the body wearing <Mould> doesn't look very comfortable, which is to visualize the spending time with patience for the true heeling and growth. But, it is the other way around. The <Mould> represents social boundaries and framework that suppress and give pressure to the contemporaries. It also shows the ambivalence in human psychology that you say you are hurt despite you stop someone coming into your world, actually locked in individualism.

The <Chair-Table> series maximize absurdly ambivalence property in this way. These works are composed of the furnitures which have both properties of chair with table and chair with a drawer respectively, and the composite photographs using their images. One chair has protruding tonguelet, and another one has water in it. These furnitures, which look very efficient and function as both chair and table, are actually contradictory and unpractical. Because the part of user's body is supposed to be cut off to fulfill simultaneously the functions of both chair and table. Practically, the user should give up the function of either chair or table. In these maximized absurd circumstances, the artist, however, never forgets healing action. The water in the table with a drawer has the answer. Water is symbolic of life and death at the same time, and has fluid form and ambiguous boundary. And yellowish water signifies concretely the amniotic fluid of mother, and the amniotic fluid is also the symbol of life that protects the unborn during pregnancy and helps childbirth. The human body sitting in the chair in which has amniotic fluid is the fetus who is waiting for the moment to go out into the world, and at that moment the chair with table turns into another <Mould>.

Recently, the artist emphasizes more the meaning of healing through the <Embroidery Drawing> series than ever before. These are drawings of the woman covered in mould on A3 size fabric, by computer embroidery. As an act of the stitching up the wounds, sewing is generally considered a symbol of healing. Making holes in the fabric and holding thread and fabric together, the embroidering represents the collapse of boundaries, combination, and communication. However, here again an ambivalent reversal exists. For making thread and fabric into one, the act of pricking cloth with a needle should be a priority, and this equates to making wounds. There will not be such ambivalent situation like making wounds prior to curing wounds. But, if you look at it another way, healing is not necessary for the being unwounded. All living beings have senses and feel emotions. It accompanies the fact that we cannot help being hurt and feeling a pain. On the contrary, we may say that if we feel a pain, then we can feel pleasure and joy as well. The only being who experiences sorrow can feel joy in its entirety. It is contradictory but true.

Art is inherently not unilinear but multi-layered and simultaneous. Art itself crosses boundaries. Art creates the moment that one's inside meets the outside world, and that material meets spirit. It is art that visible objects coexist with invisible ones, and that ambivalence is well balanced, penetrating each other. Hyun Joo's work is also the conversation with one's inside, with audiences, and the meeting with the world. It is the cocoon to protect and heal oneself, but also the making wounds to introspect. Therefore, it is inevitable for Jyun Joo to experience the ambivalence with her whole body and mind while she going on with her works. And in that inevitable process the body and inside-mind-are healed. The world is cured.