On November 13, 2013, the eighth seminar of DOOSAN Curator Workshop III featured a discussion led by artist Jewyo Rhii, whose activities are primarily based in Europe. The discussion focused on her work and her life as an artist.

1)  The Story of Artwork

Jewyo Rhii began the seminar with the story of the artworks that she produced during a two-year period in her studio in Itaewon, Seoul. Rhii’s Itaewon studio, which was located in a market street alleyway, was a very unique space in that there was a marked difference between its appearance during the daytime, when the market was open, and its appearance at night, when it became deserted. Within this space, the artist focused on herself while reacting to the circumstances around her studio with a unique sensitivity. Her artworks began from trivial everyday stories and were completed as they encountered surrounding objects that contained aesthetic or practical meanings. As a way to counter her own anxiety, vulnerability, and deficiency, she transformed drawings, writings, or worn, common objects into things with new functions. The works created through this process are currently being exhibited at the Artsonje Center, having previously been presented at the Van Abbe Museum in the Netherlands and the Museum fur Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main in Germany. When asked whether she thought her works seemed to obsess over trivial things too much, she answered that she believes that insignificant things possess a magnificent power that draws out people’s humanism, or intellectual power, as well as human experiences. She continued that this is among the most powerful strengths of human beings, and that due to this force, meaning exists in our lives as human beings.

2) An Artist’s Life

Jewyo Rhii observed that the life as an artist means living as someone who bears inevitable loneliness; thus, only someone who can endure an onslaught of tremendous pressure while working alone and who can directly face him/herself can become an artist. Also, with regard to one’s attitude as an artist, she posed a question back to the Workshop participants: “even if something is trivial, isn’t it necessary that one must immerse oneself in it?” She pointed out that since art is made by human beings, not by God, artists should reveal the power of something being “manmade.” She stated that artworks that reveal this aspect move her.

3) Regarding the DOOSAN Curator Workshop III Participants’ Exhibition 

Jewyo Rhii advised that the power of the medium that the artist uses is ultimately in not giving rise to doubts about the meaning of an artwork’s theme. She further advised that an exhibition’s degree of completeness increases where one is able to see a clear relational connection between the exhibited artworks.