MOON Kyungwon & JEON Joonho: NEWS FROM NOWHERE, FREEDOM VILLAGE
MOON Kyungwon & JEON Joonho: NEWS FROM NOWHERE, FREEDOM VILLAGE
NEWS FROM NOWHERE: FREEDOM VILLAGE, 2021, 2 channel HD film installation, color, sound, 14min. 35sec.
Courtesy of the artist. Photograph by LEE JINCHUL
MMCA Hyundai Motor Series 2021: MOON Kyungwon & JEON Joonho - NEWS FROM NOWHERE, FREEDOM VILLAGE
September 3 2021 – February 20 2022, MMCA Seoul
About the Exhibition
MOON Kyungwon and JEON Joonho’s presentation for the 2021 MMCA Hyundai Motor Series exhibition, NEWS FROM NOWHERE, FREEDOM VILLAGE, explored the relationship between humans and art...
MOON Kyungwon and JEON Joonho’s presentation for the 2021 MMCA Hyundai Motor Series exhibition, NEWS FROM NOWHERE, FREEDOM VILLAGE, explored the relationship between humans and art and the fundamental question: “What role can art play?” On view was an archive, a large-scale painting, and a two-channel video of Daeseong-dong, the only village that lies on the South Korean side of the DMZ, also known as “Freedom Village.” The video, played on two screens installed facing each other, tells the story of two characters who have been isolated from the rest of the world for a long period of time. The story of these characters who question their existence and consider ways to improve it reveals a connection between them that goes beyond spatiotemporal boundaries. News from Nowhere is inspired by the eponymous utopian novel by William Morris (1834–96), leader of the Arts and Crafts movement in the UK. MOON and JEON began working on this project in 2012 as a platform to investigate the current state of the world and ways it could be imagined in the future. As part of the exhibition, they developed the Mobile Agora platform for conversations with experts in different fields from around the world about contemporary crises, future alternatives, and the role of art after disasters.
MOON Kyungwon and JEON Joonho have worked together since 2009. Their first major collaboration, El Fin del Mundo (The End of the World), which examined the meaning of art in a future era where all social values and orders have vanished, was first presented at dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel in 2012 and since then has been shown at the Korea Artist Prize 2012 exhibition at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (2012); the Sullivan Galleries, School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2013); Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich (2015); and Tate Liverpool (2018). Moon and Jeon’s other projects include The Ways of Folding Space & Flying for the Venice Biennale (2015). Their work has also been presented at the Gwangju Biennale (2021); 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa (2021); National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung (2018); and HOME, Manchester (2017).