Recently, I attended a workshop and artist talk at the Korean Culture Centre, where I was introduced to a Korean artist and flaneur, named Hyemin Park. Hyemin is a Korean artist who holds various exhibitions in Seoul, London, Berlin, as well as in other cities around the world, where she showcases her work which focuses on creating discussions around issues of multiculturalism, all while displaying parts of her own culture often done through theoretical artistic means. This is often done by strolling the streets, where she can survey everyday life, allowing for new discoveries which inspires her work, to create a sort of discussion where reality and fiction are placed side by side to provoke an issue or situation to be questioned. This often means for Hyemin, engaging with the public throughout the creative process, so that in the end, through collaboration, something artistically beautiful and meaningful can be created. This could be seen in many examples of her work, with some including, but not limited to, “Ordinary Nations”, “IKEA”, and “Way of Leaving”.

Throughout the talk, I was introduced to many examples of her work, as well as her creative process, which gave me a new outlook on what art could resemble. It began by exploring her first piece of work titled, “HPARK Travel”. This first piece of art focused on displaying the multiculturalism and undiscovered cultures seen in Korean society, by creating a travel tour program, including guidebooks, and documentary videos, for three created cities, including “Sui”, China, “Siola”, India, and “Ciellelure”, Africa. As mentioned, the three cities were made up, and therefore the monuments and pictures in the guidebooks and the documentaries were filmed in various places in South Korea, though at first glance, it could easily fool you into thinking you were actually seeing real cities in various parts of asia. This piece of art does a good job at displaying the the importance of different cultures which aided in the transformation of Korean society. To further this experience, at the artist talk, we were even served two dishes, including curry and a black bean sauce, which supposedly are from these created cities, until eventually the audience was told, that what we were eating was actually Korean dishes. I thought this was a such a great to engage the audience into her artistic practice and become part of the art.

The second piece of work that was then mentioned was one done during 2014-2015 called “Let’s eat together”. This one consisted of creating a place where locals could come together and share their cultural experiences through various means. This was accomplished by converting an unoccupied building into a cafe, which is now called ‘Subongdabang’. Here, the artist would draw pictures of various food ingredients which would then, during the exhibition, be exchanged for the actual food ingredient drawn on the canvas. Once all the food ingredients were exchanged and collected, she would cook for the locals and invite them to share the experience.

The last piece of work I would like to mention, though many more were mentioned throughout the workshop, was one performed during 2016 and is currently ongoing, called “Ordinary Nations”. This piece of art was done through the form of various workshops with a selective group of people, where there task was to create a nation, or Utopia, where everyone would want to live. This was done by asking five questions about immigration, education, industry, environment, politics and distribution. Then the participants in the groups would all share their opinions and create decisions based on agreements. In the end, the “Republic of Widosciene” was created with a group of Austrian-Korean students aged 10-13, and the “United States of Vela Siu” was made with a group of Korean students aged 13-15. Both had strikingly different ideas, which displayed both the creativity and logic innate to humans. I displayed how we all have different ideas and priorities in life, and how culture can have an impact on this. I definitely recommend checking more out on this segment, by watching and reading the various videos posted at this link: http://hparkart.com/index.php/project/ordinary-nations/. It was interesting to watch and really see the process layed out in front of us.

In the end, this workshop was a great experience and I would like to thank Hyemin Park for introducing us to her creative process. To check out more on Hyemin Park, you can visit her website at: http://hparkart.com/, and to check out more events held by the Korean Culture Centre, you can visit their Instagram @kcccanada

You can check out original post with video from Jessica's Instagram right here