Mapping the Future World:
A Sister Cities Project Presented by Transformer
SISTER CITIES EXCHANGE: MAY – AUGUST 2020
ONLINE EXHIBITION: AUGUST 17 – SEPTEMBER 12, 2020
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Transformer is thrilled to announce Mapping the Future World – a Sister Cities project supported by the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities. Connecting Korean and DC artists through a series of online conversations & digital communications, Mapping the Future World is building dialogue, connectedness, inspiration, insight and artwork to make sense of, and move forward in, this uncertain and unprecedented time.
Considering the ways COVID-19 has been radically changing our world, both literally and figuratively, Transformer invited 8 artists to partake in a series of online conversations and group calls mid May – early August 2020, to imagine ways of approaching an equal and equitable future. South Korean artists Seo Young Chang, Seulki Ki, and Hannah Woo, and DC based artists Maps Glover, Esther Eunjin Lee, Nara Park, Valerie Wiseman, and Naoko Wowsugi engaged each other in creative dialogue, facilitated by Transformer staff, as they thought through and created artworks that reimagine and reinvent social arrangements, constructs, and structures.
Mapping the Future World reflects Transformer’s continued commitment to support the global exchange of artists’ ideas, broadening community understanding of evolving creative practices, and growing cross-cultural artist networks. The resulting Mapping the Future World online exhibition featured on Transformer’s website August 17 – September 12, 2020 shares the work the artists have created, with public programs for audiences to meet the artists and learn more about their work.
PUBLIC PROGRAMS – Presented Free; Registration required:
Dinner of the Future | Monday, August 17, 2020, 7PM (EST)
Join the participating artists of Mapping the Future World in a communal dining experience! Inspired by South Korean Mukbang culture – a viral sensation known as an eating (muk) broadcast (bang) with individuals eating & interacting with viewers online – Transformer will be hosting a virtual dinner party.
Artists Panel, Hosted by the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art | Wednesday, Sept 2, 2020, 7:30PM (EST)
Presented in collaboration with the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art, this panel featuring artists Seo Young Chang, Maps Glover, Esther Eunjin Lee, Hannah Woo, and Naoko Wowsugi, explores cross-cultural artist exchange in a virtual space. Moderated by Carol Huh, curator of contemporary Asian art at the Freer and Sackler.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Seo Young Chang explores flexible temporality and spatiality due to the variable bodily presence. Her recent focus is on non-standard time that is experienced through an ill, aged, and malfunctioning body. She works mainly with video and in 3-dimensional works. She has presented the solo exhibitions, beginning to end at the beginning (Doosan Gallery Seoul, 2019) and Off (Doosan Gallery New York, 2019), and has participated in group exhibitions such as Young Korean Artists 2019: Liquid Glass Sea (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, 2019).
Maps Glover creates work inspired by human behavior and pervasive social issues. He illustrates how time affects behavior, and how observation alters perspective. He constructs portals in which the characters he creates exist and experience the world or maps around them. Often the works addresses emotion thought conflicting colors and distorted Characters. Maps has created works at Kennedy Center, Smithsonian Arts & Industries Building, Transformer DC, and more. His unconventional approach to expressionism evolves the birth of something new.
Seulki Ki (b. 1983) treats photography as a main medium and has explored its reproducibility and limitations in forms of books, videos, and installations. Intrigued by body gestures, language, and collisions between them, she finds and assembles replacements that can actualize her flow of thoughts. She endows a character to the visible, weaves the relationships of elements, reverses the flow of time, moves through space, and she manages to mediate the viewer’s thought flows. Her work alone stays as evidence in this whole process, induces different interpretations than usual ones, and activates psychological mechanism to associate related concepts. Ki majored in photography at the Seoul Institute of the Arts and received her M.F.A. from Slade School of Fine Art in London, UK. She has had solo shows at Doosan Gallery (2018, New York), Space k (2015, Seoul), and Gallery Chosun (2013, Seoul), and has presented her works at the Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul (2019), Daegu Photo Biennial (2018), Vietnam Korean Cultural Center, Hanoi (2017), and the Novosibirsk Museum of Art, Russia (2016), amongst other places.
Esther Eunjin Lee is a person housed inside a body of Korean origin, born in Seoul and relocated to the United States of America soon after her exit from the womb. She navigated the majority of her childhood/adolescence through the rural-leaning white suburbias of Northern Maryland–managing to escape not unscathed, but with her cultural identity as intact as possible. She was fortunate enough to attend college, receiving her B.A. in studio art and graphic design from the University of Maryland, College Park, and participating in the Studio Art Departmental Honors Program. Since graduating in 2018, she has stayed in the Maryland outskirts of Washington, D.C. and exhibited work at local venues, such as Portico Gallery, Dwell DC, and IA&A Hillyer. Outside of her practice, Lee currently works as a professional picture framer for a living, picking up freelance graphic design work here and there.
Nara Park is a sculptor and installation artist based in Washington, D.C. She holds a BFA in General Fine Arts followed by an MFA in Sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art, where she received the Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award by the International Sculpture Center and Henry Walters Traveling Fellowship. She is a recipient of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Fellowship and the Hamiltonian Artists Fellowship. Park’s work has been on exhibit at numerous venues including Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, The Phillips Collection, Grounds for Sculpture, Baltimore/Washington International Airport, and American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center. Her work has been featured in Sculpture magazine, The Washington Post, and Artnet News. Her works are included in the collections of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, as well as The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC.
Valerie Wiseman is an artist and administrator based in Washington, DC. Through perpetual collaborations, she utilizes forms of communications, events and multimedia objects to engage with and document processes of the built and natural environment.
Hannah Woo is a Korean artist who grew up in Daejeon and now is based in Seoul, South Korea. She completed her BFA and MFA at the Korea National University of Arts. Her recent solo show, Moulage Mélancolique, was shown at P.S. Sarubia, Seoul in 2019. Her large, fabric-based installations have been presented at institutions including the Buk-Seoul Museum of Art, Blume Museum, the Asia Culture Center, Amado Art Space, and Art Space Pool, amongst others.
Naoko Wowsugi is an artist of Korean-Japanese descent, based in Washington, D.C. Using combined practices of visual art, local research, and community participation, Wowsugi’s projects highlight and fortify everyday communal and interpersonal identities. Space for this project was provided by Halcyon.
Mapping the Future World is supported by a grant from the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities’ Sister Cities International Art Grant.
Image Credit: Katie Lee