Installation view of 《2018 Korea Artist Prize》 © MMCA

I recommend Minja Gu (1977- ) as a candidate for the 《2018 Korea Artist Prize》. The life and work of Gu correspond, each confirming the other. Rather than merely handing out an artwork of a specific brand as a whole in itself, the artist enables one to see the world with wide-open eyes by capturing the one-centimeter zones that have not well visible despite its sure presence within the frame of the world and inviting one to look into them.

“There are certain frameworks that have been built in the course of a long time and are shared (or seem to be shared) by the members of a collective—in other words, particular ways in which one understands his or her society, the system that is agreed upon or certain ideas. And when my thoughts fall upon the fact that they are intricately connected to one’s daily thoughts and behaviors in one way or another also as the framework for one’s private life, a feeling of dread comes upon me, and that dread serves as a starting point for my works.”

The artist’s everyday approach to the macrodiscourses such as the value of labor, the function and role of social institutions and processes and standardized perceptions encourages one to rethink existing stereotypes.

In WINTER-ING (2011) the artist and the viewers shared kimchi and rice showing on the TV screen the video documentation of her helping the residents of Sungam Island, Ansan, Gyeonggi Province for which she got rice and kimchi. As the production process of an artwork is replaced by the process of laboring, this work invites one to speculate on the value of labor.

Her photographic documentation, The World of Job shows Gu’s performing the role of a foreign worker as it depicts the process in which an immigrant’s story about the difficulty of finding jobs in Taiwan leads to her carrying around a sign for a job opening on the streets and her finding a job through an employment agency and her working there.

In 42.195 (2006) the artist finishes her own two-day marathon during which she walks, eats and walks again instead of running in an actual several-hour marathon race and by doing so voices her defiance against the idea of competition. In The Authentic Quality (2014) the artist reproduces the foods in accordance with the photos of them on their packages and serves them to the viewers.

The realization of this project took her about two years as she got a cook license in Korean cuisine. The artist ordered the same bowls and plates as ones in the photos and imitated the colors and shapes very closely, and this substantiation of those designed and intended images reveals the gap between the real and the image.

23:59:60 (2016) captures a myriad of faces of the world at the leap second, which is known to occur every three years. Between 23:59:59 of June 30, 2015 and 00:00:00 of July 1, 2016 is added one leap second. The artists asked people in various places throughout the world to take a picture as directed by her.

The Square Table: Public Hearing of the Requirements for the Artist-position Government Official (2013) is of two mock public forums where a public official, an artist, a professor, a magazine writer, a curator and a cultural critic talk about the various matters in relation to the establishment of the position of the artist-official including qualifications, duties, the kind of the department and salaries. This project allows one to ponder upon aspects of social structure such as the roles of art, the system of the government, the employment and salary of young people.

​Gu does not scrutinize the everyday life from critical perspectives. Rather she documents in the forms of photography, video and publication her performances in which emphasis is given to intents and processes. In these performances the artist is not a mere observer. She executes them by herself, experiences and shares with viewers. She puts into practice the social function of art to let one see from new, different perspectives.

Her way of thinking is based on the humanities which are concerned with what is human. Her work does not involve the evaluation of humans in the criterion of ‘average’ understanding but encourages to reconsider such understanding and value. In the present times when social is pluralized and various social networking services are popularly used as communication means, either the new or the ideological is not the sufficient condition for a work of art.

Artists of these days form relationships with and get along with other people as a member of society and therein make and complete their works. Here they encounter the unexpected accidents and discover variable significances, neither authoritative truth nor fixed meanings.

Gu does not judge them by the measure of good or bad but accepts them as they are and feeds them into her works of complicated and multilayered structure. Minja Gu is an artist who is capable of stirring up such a discourse, and thereby more than qualifies for the Korea Artist Prize, one of the substantial patronage-oriented art projects in this contemporary Korean art scene.

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