
Park Chan-Kyong
Citizen's Forest, 2016
Three channel black and white video (26 min 6 sec), directional sound
Dimensions variable
Edition of 5 plus 2 AP
Citizen's Forest was inspired by the artist's affection for The Lemures, an incomplete painting by Korean artist Oh Yoon (1946-1986) and Colossal Roots, a poem written by Korean poet Kim...
Citizen's Forest was inspired by the artist's affection for The Lemures, an incomplete painting by Korean artist Oh Yoon (1946-1986) and Colossal Roots, a poem written by Korean poet Kim Sooyoung (1921-1968).
The Lemures (1984) is a panoramic sketch depicting a procession of victims from major incidents in Korean modern history, including the Donhak Peasant Revolution, the Korean War and the Gwangju Uprising. Colossal Roots (1974) is a delightfully intellectual text taking into account the multiple layers of unconditional acceptance of segmented ‘tradition' while subverting the Orientalist's perspective. Citizen's Forest therefore serves as a contemporary platform calling forth the mutual interests shared by these two works on historical trauma and ‘Asian Gothic' imagination.
With form derived from "shan-su (landscape)" paintings mounted on scrolls, or a haunted house in an amusement park, this work invites the audience to walk through a dark corridor with ghostly spirits of forest that appearing in the forms of video and sound. Stripped of a dramatization of ghosts, this work is a collective testament to the approximation of a ‘ghostly' element inherent in the conventional performed actions of the characters. Regardless of its allegorical allusion to history or tradition, these ghostly citizens in the work seem fully aware of the contemporary apathy towards their existence.