PARK Seong Jun, Never Trust Mainlanders and Never Tell Anyone in Jeju What You Really Think-1, 2018, Video installation, Dimensions variable

My recent works engage with discourses surrounding media and capitalist systems in contemporary society, systems often represented through madness, fear, and schizophrenia.

They tell stories of people objectified by capitalism who cannot endure without going mad, as well as those who live without even realizing that they are mad—characters and narratives that seem as though they might have emerged from a film. Moreover, their lives, in which moving images and reality are intermingled, are connected to ours either directly or indirectly, reflecting cinematic images of humanity back onto itself.

As a spatial environment, the island gradually gives rise to various psychological and physical conflicts as its relatively simple, naturally formed internal structure encounters complex external elements that have suddenly flowed in.

This work therefore evokes for the viewer the conflicts between human desire and anxiety by representing opposing yet coexisting elements within Jeju—migrants and native residents, nature and development, Koreans and foreigners, mainland culture and Jeju culture, and ideals and reality—through dramatic devices.

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