Crossings | Jina Song
9-11 August 2019
Outlier Gallery
Glasgow, UK
Press release
Memory does not replicate events; rather, it recalls how events are experienced. Moments shift and change before slipping unfairly out of remembrance with the passage of time. What remains is a continuum of emotional resonance, an imperfect record that can at once reflect, enhance, and contradict the past.
In Crossings, Jina Song uses a range of performative practices to understand the subjective condition of remembering. Song’s recent work stems from a semi-autobiographical narrative which follows the lives of three women: Sinja (grandmother), Agnes (daughter), and Nawoon (granddaughter). With no dominant timeline, the story materialises as a series of scattered moments in which the artist’s role is left intentionally unclear. Each video, sound, and installation is a record of an embodied performance, where the past ripples into the present through Song’s symbolic reprise.
The performance Chapter 51-70, Acts I-III is Song’s newest and most elaborate interpretation for a live audience. It relates to the years 1951 to 1970, when the character of Sinja (an anagram of Jina) first arrives in the United Kingdom. Building on past performances, Song employs figurative actions and materials to express Sinja’s inner world and foreshadow her eventual impact on Agnes and Nawoon.
With the medium of ongoing fiction, Song is able to work between and across the confines of conventional art practice. Her enquiry concerns ideas of process, presence, and experience first and foremost, with the creation of objects and things as an intuitive offshoot. The story’s permeability—among the three generations and between Song’s own lived experience and creative output—is not easily accommodated by linear frameworks. She asks us to accept the vagueness of the narrative, and in exchange, offers something that is immediate, real, and alive.
List of works:
Chapter 56-70, ‘Mondu’ (2019). Digital video, 1.57 min. Chapter 16-18, 44328km, ‘I Decided to Leave, It Was My Decision’ (2019).
Digital sound loop, poly fabric, ceramic tea set, fibreboard box, LED tea lights.
Chapter 78-80, Eden’s Messages (2019). Digital video, 3.40min.
Chapter 51-70, The Trunk (2019). Steel string, Korean poly fabric, LED light bulb, braided rope, wire hangers, hand sewn skirt and belt, blouse.
Chapter 51-70, The Well (2019). Fibreboard, poly fabric, bucket.
Chapter 50, Liverpool #2 (2019). Projected digital image.
Chapter 51-70, Acts I-III (2019). Live performance with recorded sound, approx. 15min.