Featured within our Communal Project Space as an integral component of our current exhibition 'Jane Jin Kaisen: Halmang', are four publications originating from Kaisen's earlier projects. Each publication serves as an imagery and narrative reference, delving into extended themes and discourses that engage with the intersectional, cross-generational experience within the Korean diaspora.
Using these publications as points of departure, we are hosting series of reading and discussion groups to engage in a collective exploration, nesting deeper connections with the exhibition themes as well as one another.
No booking or prior reading required. Drop-in welcome.
Jane Jin Kaisen, Community of Parting, 2020
Published in relation to the exhibition ‘Jane Jin Kaisen: Community of Parting’ at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, 13 June – 16 August, 2020
‘Community of Parting’ is an extension and continuation of Jane Jin Kaisen’s artistic practice. Kaisen brings past and present, the eternal and the temporal, into play through layered, performative, and multi-voiced feminist works that explore topics such as memory, war, migration, and borders in a field where individual experiences and collective stories intersect. Her works negotiate and mediate the means of representation, resistance, and reconciliation, thus forming alternative genealogies and sites of collective emergence.
Presenting a selection of artworks realised between 2010 and 2020 through installation views and film stills together with a vast array of research material and archival documents, this monograph is the hitherto most comprehensive introduction to the artist’s work.
The book is composed of several interwoven voices: the ‘Community of Parting’ film script that integrates oral testimonies with poetics by Kim Hyesoon, poetry by Mara Lee, and shamanic ritual chants by Koh Sunahn. These are accompanied by essay contributions by Heidi Ballet, Anselm Franke, Pujita Guha and Abhijan Toto for the Forest Curriculum, Anne Kølbæk Iversen, Jane Jin Kaisen, Hyunjin Kim, Soyi Kim, Yongwoo Lee, and conversations with Mary Kelly and Kim Seongnae.
Published by Archive Books and The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, in collaboration with Kunsthal Charlottenborg
Edited by Anne Kølbæk Iversen and Jane Jin Kaisen Graphic design by Dokho Shin and Guston Sondin-Kung Flexicover, English, 472 pages
Jane Jin Kaisen, Dissident Translations, 2011
Published in relation to the exhibition ‘Jane Jin Kaisen: Dissident Translations’ at Århus Kunstbygning, 8 October, 2011 – 8 January, 2012
‘Dissident Translations’ encompasses various artwork illustrations, research material, and archive images from Kaisen’s artworks ‘Reiterations of Dissent’ (2011), ‘Light and Shadow’ (2011), ‘Island of Stone’ (2011) and ‘Retake: Mayday’ (2011). Taken together, the works explore how the supressed history and fragmented memories of the Jeju April Third Resistance and Massacre, which unfolded between 1947- 1954, continue to resonate in the present. With the inclusion of archive material and illustrations from her previous films ‘Tracing Trades’ (2006) and ‘The Woman, The Orphan, and The Tiger’ (2010), the publication provides a further insight into Kaisen’s research-based practice and her broader engagement with transnational histories and legacies of colonialism, militarism, and gender marginalisation.
Published by Forlaget Århus Kunstbygning Edited by Jane Jin Kaisen
Graphic design by Lasse Krog Møller
Written contributions by Jane Jin Kaisen, Cecilia Wiedenheim and Yasuko Ikeuchi
Soft cover, English, 120 pages
Jane Jin Kaisen, Loving Belinda, 2015
Published in relation to the exhibition ‘Jane Jin Kaisen: Loving Belinda’ at Galleri Image, 9 January, 2015 – 8 March, 2015
The publication Loving Belinda contextualises and expands Jane Jin Kaisen’s art project ‘Loving Belinda’ (2006-15) that began with the video ‘Adopting Belinda’ from 2006 about a supposedly Asian-American couple who adopt a white girl from Denmark.
The project employs the mockumentary genre, appropriating documentary features to destabilise reality with subversive effect. By staging and reversing the racial hierarchy within transnational adoption, the works expose some of the uneven economic, racial, and cultural relations of power that are embedded within the practice but that tend to remain unspoken.
The Loving Belinda publication contextualises the fictional universe of the art project through conversations between the artist and the participants Tobias Hübinette, Lene Myong, and Morten Goll, all non-actors and who in reality are committed to anti-racist advocacy and critical discourse on transnational adoption. Kaisen’s artistic interventions into discourses on transnational adoption, colonial legacies and migration are further reflected in essays by Marianne Ping Huang, Louise Wolthers, and Tone Olaf Nielsen.
Published by Asterisk Edited by Jane Jin Kaisen
Graphic design by Guston Sondin-Kung
Written contributions by Jane Jin Kaisen, Tobias Hübinette, Morten Goll, Lene Myong, Marianne Ping Huang, Louise Wolthers, Tone Olaf Nielsen
Soft cover, 180 pages
Jane Jin Kaisen, Currents, 2023
Published in relation to the exhibition ‘Jane Jin Kaisen: Currents’ at Fotografisk Center, 13 January – 12 March, 2023
The publication outlines Kaisen’s practice and Jeju’s shamanic traditions, cosmology, and myths in a dialogue between Jane Jin Kaisen and Pujita Guha, who, with Abhijan Toto, is the founder of the Forest Curriculum, a nomadic platform for interdisciplinary research and mutual learning. Furthermore, the publication incorporates a preface and an essay by Signe Kahr Sørensen, director at Fotografisk Center, in which she delves into a discussion and reflection about the works featured in the exhibition at Fotografisk Center and provides a contextualisation of Kaisen’s research and artistic practice. Kaisen’s work ‘Offering – Coil Embrace’ acts as a central part of the publication; it is a prominent visual element recurring several times throughout the publication, inspired by Kaisen’s research of cyclical motions, the nature of the ocean as well as humans’ connection with mythology, cosmology, and the cycle of life and death.
Edited by Signe Kahr Sørensen and Jane Jin Kaisen Graphic design by Spine Studio
Written contributions by Signe Kahr Sørensen, Pujita Guja and Jane Jin Kaisen
Soft touch cover, English and Danish, 152 pages
esea contemporary presents Jane Jin Kaisen's first UK solo show ‘Halmang’, featuring polyphonic moving-image works, archive and reference materials. By weaving together oceanic cosmology and gendered histories, the exhibition is an in-depth inquiry into narratives of subjective and collective loss, resilience, and the formation of alternative communities.
