Signs of change | Mona Young-eun KIM

Signs of change, 2021

Metal sculpture, letter

2!0 cm x 110 cm

Exhibition Exophony, Euljiro OF, Seoul, South Korea

Curator : Daniel Schine Lee

Collaboration distance with Joongyong Kim

Le Monde Projeté_ㅁㄴㄱㅇㅇ, dimensions variable – Off site installation

Le Monde Projeté_Jingle Jingle, 121x134x30cm – Room 503

Le Monde Projeté_Empty Shell, Dimensions variable – Exterior installation

Text of the exhibition Exophony

Out of all the languages out there, most are foreign to us. We often only faintly remember the sound of a foreign language which isn’t our mother tongue, or the language of the culture which we are familiar with. What form does a memorable language possess? This exhibition is an attempt to bring together works which were carried out within the arbitrariness and uncertainty of language. Mona Young-eun Kim, Joongyong Kim, Evi Kalogiropoulou, Kye Sung Lee, and Daniel Schine Lee all have different linguistic backgrounds, butshare a common concern for discovering the language of their work within the terrain of unfamiliar languages.

Language is also the foremost barrier for foreigners. Mona Young-eun Kim’s VR piece, Est-ce que c’estle futur? erases words from the cityscape, thereby presenting a landscape full of blunt, directive languages in a geometric way. Within the piece, street signs of the 13th arrondissement of Paris function like empty screens and make us imagine a world devoid of words. Through such a process, Mona Young-eun Kim deals with the violent potentials of language.

While discussing the installation of Mona Young-eun Kim’s work (Mona Young-eun Kim is currently living and working in France), Joongyong Kim joined the show. In his previous piece, Projekt_Titelschild, Joongyong Kim arbitrarily placed name cards of artworks within a space and recreated his own versions according to the information on the name cards. Mona Young-eun Kim’s work translated in Joongyong Kim’s own language, explores the process in which the language of an artwork gets materialized.

Text: Daniel Schine Lee

Translation: Kye Sung Lee