brilliant 30: Haejung Jung

Q. Could you briefly explain your work?

When I was living in Itaewon for a short time, I used to do performance art by pushing around a small makeshift wooden structure resembling a house. It had ‘Itaewon’ written on its façade in Sino-Korean.
During these performances, I met various group of people. I traced their palms onto tracing paper and collected them into an artist’s book which I called ‘Palm Map #1’. For ‘Palm Map #3’, I transferred every one’s palm lines I met on paper using colored pencils. Additional content was added, such as stories I shared with them. For others, I turned the palm lines into pathways by drawing mountains and rivers around them.
‘Palm Map’ is not a completed piece; it is better understood as an ongoing project. Areas of interest I have for this particular project are: the relationships between the city and the people, the city and an individual, and the past and the present. Although I was mesmerized by the simple beauty of the palm lines, I do believe that a person's palm is where their memories are stored - a vessel that carries them. With the hand as a medium, I want to map out my thoughts on the city, people into the places I visit.

‘Wavewave’ brings together all my works from the Han River. Our perceptionon Han River is quite limited or partial to some degree. I wanted to pry into or even break these restrictions and rules, like a hacker would do to a website.
My fellow artists and I built a small boat and named it ‘The Horakjil’. In this little ferry, we installed equipment including a periscope, a telescope, a rotating mirror, a rotating chair and an apparatus that would allow us to draw on a transparent background. We documented our journey across, down and around the Han River. Jeoja Island is an island that no longer exists on the map; it is now a small delta island near Apgujeong-dong, Seoul, Korea. I took a radio transmitter and made a live broadcast from there. A single channel video was made to show the recordings of my journey. It is called the ‘Wavewave Imagination Museum’. It has been shown publicly at a gallery.

Haejung Jung majored in painting at Hongik University and attained a diploma in Arts and Design at Geneva Univeristy of Arts & Design and at Korea National University of Arts. Her work has been on exhibit in over 8 solo and 19 group shows, and various cultural projects. Throughout her career as an artist from 2009 until 2012, she was awarded Ilhyun Travel Grant, Arkomedia Fund, SEMA Young Artist Fund, and Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture Visual Arts Fund. She was also selected as an artist for Hyundai Group’s Art Project. In 2014, Haejung Jung was featured as the cover artist for art magazine, Public Art.

Haejung Jung works in diverse media including video, photography, books, drawing, sculpture and installation. Pinpointing just one medium for the sake of introduction is not possible. Nonetheless, if one were to be chosen, it would be travel.
The word ‘travel’ is not used here in the sense of touring and holidaying. It is means for research and an act of hacking and trespassing into an anarchic realm. The artist takes a different approach in her perception of ordinary places such as the Han River and national highway which we may pass on a daily basis. She records the remaining traces of those places and reconstructs them in order to discover the relationships between the city and people, the city and the individual, past and the present.
Her projects continue as an ongoing process, and are presented as a series. A project may be concluded, but never completed. It is endlessly modified according to place and time and the people who see it. Jung’s interactions with visitors are also reflected in later versions of her work. In that sense, her art works are like fellow travelers.