Yoon will be visiting us in Spain for the opening, thanks to the kind support of Arts Council Korea.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
“The Pink and Blue Project” at La Caja Blanca, brings together a selection of ten photographs from a series initiated in 2005, while the Korean artist was studying at the SVA, School of Visual Arts in New York.
Since the initial experiments with a 6x6 format Hasselblad camera and her five year old daughter’s collection of “pink things”, Yoon has made over XX portraits from children – boys and girls – who live in entirely different social and cultural environments, within the first world.
Today, the project has developed into a work in progress which Yoon adds to as she travels across the globe.
… she loves pink so much that she wants to wear only pink clothes and use only pink toys or objects… I found that she is not unusual and most other little girls in the U.S. and South Korea love pink clothing, accessories and toys. This phenomenon seems widespread among various ethnic groups regardless of their cultural background.
- JeongMee Yoon
THE PHOTOGRAPHS
In the fashion of traditional portraiture, the sitters appear accompanied by their most prized possessions, a collection of status-signifying and gender-specific objects.
At first glance, the photographic studies of smiling little children, immersed in their vibrant colour of choice, merging into their private collections of artefacts and objects, appear humorous, delightful and charming. Displayed together within a museum or gallery space, however, the little characters appear as exhibits within a collection of studies, provoking an eerie sense of staged, orchestrated performance.
While the camera appears to offer an objective, detailed, and neutral gaze into the child’s universe, the viewer is offered a seditious insight into the very process of identity construction in contemporary society.
Surrounded by a host of objects carefully displayed according to size, shape and colour, the children appear to assimilate and mimic the aesthetic qualities of these objects, in an effort to become like them, to belong to the same category.
THE ARTISTS DISCOURSE
This fascination with the accumulation of things, and the relationship with social systems is a recurring theme in Yoon’s work. Between 2000 and 2004, the Korean artist worked on a series titled “Space-Man-Space” where she photographed workers at shops in Seoul, as they were classifying and organising their items in order to display as many as possible in very tight spaces.
I am fascinated by […] artificial environments that are arranged and organized through predetermined classifications.
- JeongMee Yoon
In “The Pink and Blue Project”, she takes these concerns a step further, by explicitly referencing objects that are displayed in a museum collection, questioning the role of collecting in contemporary society.
When I take pictures, I begin the photographic session by arranging the larger items blankets and coats, and then spread the smaller articles on the bed and floor… This method shows my organization of subjects similar to the way in which museums categorize their inventories and display their collections.
- JeongMee Yoon
The neutrality of the camera’s gaze in these works, and their evenly diffused lighting and all over sharpness of focus conveys the sense of a social inventory.
– Richard Vine, Managing Editor, ART IN AMERICA.
It is not entirely clear whether Yoon’s work is consciously exploring the theme of collecting, as a mechanism for constructing identity within a pre-defined social system, or if her work seeks to celebrate the joy of aesthetic and material consumption. Nonetheless, once the first impressions left by the oversweet images melt away, the viewer is confronted with a series of awkward questions: Who exactly is responsible for the performance we see here, the media? The parents? The photographer? The marketing departments for Barbie and Superman toys? … the children themselves?
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