Installation view of 《The Multilingual》 © DOOSAN Gallery
DOOSAN Art
Center DOOSAN Gallery presents DOOSAN Humanities Theater 2026 Special
Exhibition 《The Multilingual》, through August 1.
DOOSAN
Humanities Theater is an annual program that brings together scientific,
humanistic, and artistic imagination, inviting audiences to reflect on
fundamental questions about the society we live in today from diverse
perspectives. In 2026, under the theme “New Taxonomy,” the program features
three performing arts, one exhibition, and eight lectures.
Installation view of 《The Multilingual》 © DOOSAN Gallery
《The Multilingual》 questions the conventional systems of classification through which
human beings are defined—such as nationality, gender, language, and age—and
seeks to understand humanity as something complex and ever-changing.
The
exhibition takes its title and point of departure from the life of a real
individual who lived through some of the most turbulent moments of modern
Korean history. Born in North Korea in 1930, she experienced Japanese colonial
rule and the Korean War, fled to South Korea, later immigrated to the United
States, and eventually returned to Korea.
Installation view of 《The Multilingual》 © DOOSAN Gallery
In the final
stage of her life, as she underwent cognitive changes, she began speaking in a
mixture of Japanese, English, and Korean. Human beings, like her, are not fixed
entities but fluid existences that are continuously formed and rewritten
through long histories, memories, and experiences from birth until death. By
what taxonomy, then, can such an enigmatic being be defined?
Through their
distinctive visual languages—including indirect ways of seeing,
misunderstanding, abstraction, speaking simultaneously, layering, and
concealing—the participating artists, Gim Ikhyun, IM Youngzoo, Chung Seoyoung,
and Choey Eun Young Cho, propose alternative ways of understanding that move
beyond fixed modes of classification.
Working
across sculpture, photography, video, and sound, the artists approach mutable
portraits that are continually shaped and reshaped through temporal
disjunctions, misalignments, and gaps.
Participating
Artists: Gim Ikhyun, IM Youngzoo, Chung Seoyoung, Choey Eun Young Cho
