‘Between Record and Memory’ by Six Visual Artists

The Seoul Museum of Art will hold the exhibition <Recording Memory> at the SeMA Bunker for a total of 34 days, running through June 5.

The SeMA Bunker was discovered in 2005 during the construction of the Yeouido Bus Transfer Center, and since 2017 it has served as a branch of the Seoul Museum of Art, presenting a variety of cultural and artistic programs for the public.

This exhibition brings together, all at once, six video works from the Seoul Museum of Art’s ‘SeMA Bunker Archive Project,’ which was carried out from 2017 to 2021. Three of these are new works that have never been shown before and are being unveiled for the first time in this exhibition.

The ‘SeMA Bunker Archive Project’ is a project that newly archives the Yeouido Bunker—reborn in 2017 as an art space for the citizens of Seoul—through the works of visual artists. All six works were subsequently acquired into the collection of the Seoul Museum of Art and have been managed and operated as such.

The six participating artists (Kwon Hye-won, Kim Da-um, Son Kwang-ju, Shin Ji-sun, Yoon Ji-won, and Lee Jeong-woo) have created works through the ‘SeMA Bunker Archive Project’ that project their own diverse perspectives, using the ambiguous and multifaceted time and space of the SeMA Bunker as a medium. This exhibition is a curated show that gathers in one place the works of these six artists, produced through the project from 2017 to the present.

The exhibition title ‘Recording Memory’ describes the approach of the ‘SeMA Bunker Archive Project,’ which records the unclear information related to the bunker while remembering it. It reflects an intention to explore the site beyond merely proving and reproducing historical facts, seeking to reveal the mutable identity of a bunker that lacks any record.

The exhibition space is divided into three sections, each composed respectively of one monitor, four single-channel screens, and one multi-channel screen, with works screened at random within each section. This system, which automatically plays the works irregularly without assigning any order to each artist’s interpretation and perspective, naturally draws visitors toward the light of the screens. As visitors encounter the memories recorded by the six artists, the hope is that they will first imagine a future ‘SeMA Bunker Archive Project.’

▲ Kwon Hye-won <Dark Matter>