Hwayeon Nam
Seongsan Art Hall
Hwayeon Nam, Relentless Enthusiasm, 2024, single channel video, color, sound, 7min
Nam’s video Relentless Enthusiasm connects earth and universe, eras pre and post civilization, creating intersections between spaces and times that have never been experienced. Hands covered in juice, a face swallowing fruit, and scenes of a food waste dump all create dialectic juxtapositions of intense visual impressions, triggering a new kind of space-time. The process of food waste disposal, a metaphor for prolonging life, over-consumption and over-indulgence, excretion and decay, and the movement of eerie machines that represent the body’s digestive processes, all evocative of individual consumption, life and death. And the additional phrases — combed earthenware and stoneware; detached and leftover rockets — position the viewer between the past, going back in time, and the promise of a utopia that attempts to escape from the present, without ever quite arriving.
Nam’s video Relentless Enthusiasm connects earth and universe, eras pre and post civilization, creating intersections between spaces and times that have never been experienced. Hands covered in juice, a face swallowing fruit, and scenes of a food waste dump all create dialectic juxtapositions of intense visual impressions, triggering a new kind of space-time. The process of food waste disposal, a metaphor for prolonging life, over-consumption and over-indulgence, excretion and decay, and the movement of eerie machines that represent the body’s digestive processes, all evocative of individual consumption, life and death. And the additional phrases — combed earthenware and stoneware; detached and leftover rockets — position the viewer between the past, going back in time, and the promise of a utopia that attempts to escape from the present, without ever quite arriving.
