Installation view of 《Whispers Toward the Outside》 ⓒ Daegu Art Museum
Daegu Art Museum presents Daegu Forum V 《Whispers Towards the Outside》 on view
through October 25.
Daegu Forum is the Daegu Art Museum’s signature exhibition
series, exploring diverse contemporary phenomena through the lens of art.
Marking its fifth edition in 2026, this year’s exhibition, 《Whispers Towards the Outside》,
asks—through art’s quiet way of sensing the world—what small signals we are
failing to notice amid the overflow of grand words.
Grand histories remain in recorded language, but the anxieties
and hopes that moved those histories often first take shape among small voices.
In this sense, a whisper is also a language that power cannot easily control. A
whisper is a language that captures precisely such traces of change. It is also
an important signal, one that first reveals the direction in which the world is
moving.
Installation view of 《Whispers Toward the Outside》 ⓒ Daegu Art Museum
The eight artists participating in the exhibition each present
such moments of whispering in their own language. Thao Nguyen Phan calls forth
the lingering echoes of memories that persist even after colonialism and war,
while Shirin Neshat contemplates the process by which individuals reclaim their
own voices amid the illusions produced by power and media.
Through differing perspectives and testimonies surrounding a
single incident, Mario Pfeifer reveals fissures in truths erased by society,
while Annie Ning depicts the anxiety and self-doubt of a figure unable to
belong anywhere within a community, as well as the gestures of liberation that
emerge from that condition.
Meanwhile, Kimsooja reveals traces of time etched by life
through the quiet language of the body that exists prior to words, while
ByunKaka regards with an affectionate gaze the will of the body as it endures
time and continues to live. Choi Jimok questions the very act of seeing between
light and afterimage, while Kim Beom reveals an imagination that estranges the
familiar world and casts doubt on what is taken for granted.
Installation view of 《Whispers Toward the Outside》 ⓒ Daegu Art Museum
A quiet vibration runs through the works of these artists, whose
artistic worlds are otherwise distinct. It is a movement that reveals
sensations and relations hidden beneath the surface of the familiar world,
rather than explaining the world or making definitive assertions about it.
Perhaps whispering is the most delicate response to the
absurdities of the world, as well as an attitude of seeking to capture the
signs and emotions of society that do not easily reveal themselves.
《Whispers Toward the Outside》 is a place for
listening closely to those subtle tremors. And as we follow those whispers, the
order and boundaries of the world we have long taken for granted gradually
begin to appear differently before us. Perhaps the changes that move the world
begin not with the loudest voice, but with the quietest one.
Participating Artists: Kim Beom, Kimsooja,
ByunKaka, Choi Jimok, Annie Ning, Mario Pfeifer, Shirin Neshat, Thao Nguyên
Phan
