Soohyun Koo

OPENING HOURS, 2016, Performance, In cooperation with 2016 Korea Art Week

, 1000

In Korean society—which is transitioning toward a multicultural, multi-racial, and multi-ethnic society—people rarely use museums as a field of “arts,” “life,” or “labor.” We need to overcome this barrier and take time to change our institutions and their way of thinking to become inclusive of diverse social dimensions. The project OPENING HOURS sets up a Korean museum as a specific geopolitical situation; the artist examines a particular occasion in which the museum hires an immigrant worker as a museum facility manager and what occurs between the museum, artworks, the exhibition space, and between the hired manager and audience. The project illuminates a political structure and the relationships among its actors. The artist collaborated with an agency for foreign workers in Ansan, Gyeonggi-do; she proposed work conditions, hired a worker, and educated him to work as a museum hall manager. The hired immigrant worker presents a performance in Mediacity Seoul 2016 where he works as exhibition hall manager. The overall processes of the project are to be recorded as a documentary film.

Soohyun Koo

b. 1983. Lives and works in Seoul.
In 2008, Koo Soohyun graduated from the college of art, Kookmin University majoring in painting and moved on to the graduate program in intermedia art at the same university in 2015. In 2011, Koo Soohyun launched an artists’ collective named Sidodeul, a word meaning attempts. Since 2013 Koo has been active with her own personal projects, and she is a member of the Euljiro Hawaii. Koo Soohyun began to show a concern for where the individual stands and how the society is composed structurally in the installation be normal. By collecting everyday objects and placing them in unexpected contexts, Koo explores the roles and relationships that are defined by structure and institutions while also examining various phenomena that spring from them. More recently, she has focused her attention on the art scene. Building on her experience in various roles as museum volunteer, docent, intern curator, designer and installation assistant, Koo attempts to approach and interpret from the fringes, and sheds light on behavior and psychological state as defined by one’s role.

Performers:?Ali Algnin,?Arlene Faytaren,?Isa Senyonga,?Rebecca Birurgi,?Sar Dik