Creating new spaces for alternative thinking on
our present human condition is at the centre of
the work of Ayoung Kim.
Working closely with composers, musicians and
performers, Ayoung’s method is—in her own
words—”a criss-crossing collective working
process.” In Melbourne, it includes her audience
—in a subtle and fluid sense—through the
presentation of key works in two locations: at the
Collingwood Arts Precinct, and at Mueller Hall,
Herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens.
In these exhibitions, Ayoung’s use of sound and
immersive staging achieve an uneasy balancing
act between experiential uplifting—a sense
of floating—and an incredible sense of depth
and grounding, by questioning how the history
of technology connects with ancient myths,
religion, opera, war and today’s intense flux of
migration. Ayoung explores contemporary times’
sense of drama, human tragedy and destruction.
Ayoung’s work brings awareness of political
and technological events that is both poetic
and profound.
In the exhibitions that you are about to visit,
the artist subverts narratives and plays with
traditional notions of time and history. Both
works are grounded in the artist’s research in
the Middle East, as well as a common attention
to the role of information today, questioning
whose story is being told, whose voices are
being heard, and how. In our interconnected
world, these works may be calling for a certain
unleashing of the divisive structures perpetrated
by colonialism, imperialism and modernisation.
These works strive toward an understanding of
society as one, and a renegotiation of what is
perceived as other.
—ANABELLE LACROIX