UNBIDDEN | JIN-ME YOON
09.29.2007 | 11.11.2007

Jin-me Yoon’s most recent body of work continues to explore the relationship between identity and place in its examination of the temporal and spatial pluralities of diasporic peoples. Yoon’s new work examines the haunting of history, reminding viewers that no one is exempt from what cultural theorist Ben Highmore defines as the “unmanaged continuation of the past in the present.”

Situated within ambiguous sites of the Canadian landscape, Yoon’s video performances and photographs suggest histories dislocated in time and space. Using an economy of gestures, the artist makes reference to the historical trauma of war. More specifically, but not exclusively, Yoon examines the Korean War and the ongoing military tensions that still exist between the two Koreas.

These metaphoric enactments consider the psychic and intergenerational effects that linger. The different video loops present fragments of disassociated actions. Over and over, like the continual looping of a video, the involuntary surfacing of a memory is repeated in the subject’s psyche, even though she has never directly experienced the event. By performing this physical repetition, the subject reinforces her own subjectivity. Viewing these re-enactments reinforces the unconscious memory of what we might associate with war.

Some of the video works and photographs recall children’s war games, while others are reminiscent of a certain genre of war film. Other works speak of the physical extremes endured by war prisoners, the psychic condition of paranoia and the very real possibility of death. For the viewer, these haunting performances become apparitions of what we collectively recognize as war, but ultimately find difficult to pin down as a literal representation of the event.

Yoon’s continued use of the body links this new project with her past work, as well as to that of other contemporary artists; however, this new work also marks a notable departure. Previous work suggests a preoccupation with the exteriority of the body as a sign marked by historical processes of racialization and gender, as well as maternity. In the new work, the body still functions as an historical cipher haunting the present with the past, yet it is evoked through the economy and repetition of gestures.