Article by Kim Tae Ik, Artistic Insight on “Dislocation”

Five Years After Her Return to Her Homeland, Myong Hi Kim Holds a Solo Exhibition

At Won Gallery, from May 12 to 15, the viewers will have an opportunity to see the recent works of Myong Hi Kim. After living in New York for 17 years, she has moved into Naepyungni, a tiny village in a remote part of Kangwon Province in 1990 and labored over the last five years to recapture the vitality of its people and surrounding nature. This exhibition offers a glimpse into the rationale behind the artist’s “second exit” from Seoul in search of her own unique vision. Kim states, “This exhibition has a special meaning for me because it is my first in eight years and also because it represents a body of work I completed since my return to Korea. I wanted to portray my personal as well as artistic experiences I had while living in Naepyungni. I hope my work will serve as a fitting memorial to this forgotten village.”

A woman heading home with a basket of edible weeds she gathered, wild irises blooming along the roadside, small children with nets running around to catch cicadas, a big bamboo basket overflowing with ground cherries, eggplants, cucumbers, and tomatoes―the scenes on Kim’s canvases are drawn invariably from the stuff of everyday life in a rural village. Her descriptive powers, long recognized for their extraordinarily detailed truthfulness, seem to have peaked in her works shown in this exhibition; both people and objects take on a life of their own and jump off the canvas.

Kim’s paintings begin where those of others often leave off; they transcend mere sentiment for the exotic or nostalgia for the bygone days. Rather, they provide keen insights on the subject of displacement or dislocation, a phenomenon that is presently occurring at countless locations across the world. In 1990 Kim writes in her autobiographical notes: “I didn’t want to rehash in Seoul of the 90s the failings of the materialistic culture that I experienced in America of the 80s. Instead, by positioning myself in a deserted elementary school in Naepyungni, I wanted to return to nature in the hope of overcoming the sense of loss through a reunion with the souls of the displaced children.”

When Kim and her husband, Tchah-sup Kim, also an artist, left the bustle of Manhattan for the secluded quiet of Naepyungni, the village had all but been abandoned. The construction of a dam across the Soyang River had resulted in the flooding of the surrounding area, and many villagers left their homes, forcing the four-room elementary school to close its doors. By the time Kims bought the school building and moved into it in 1990, the village consisted of seven households and, except for the occasional visits by the mail carrier, was entirely cut off from the outside world.

Scattered about this abandoned school building, now her home, Kim found old Korean flags and discarded slogans that read “Serve Your Country and Honor Your Parents!’ “Let’s Work Hard,” and “Report Spies”―the remnants of the past that led her to reflect on her own role as an artist. She concluded that “...an artist’s primary responsibility is that of a witness/experiencer.”

Of the 31 works displayed in this exhibition, a good number are paintings done on the chalkboards that Kim found still hanging in the empty classrooms. Faded from decades of repeated use, the chalkboards provide a poignant backdrop for the happy and innocent faces of the children. For Kim, the chalkboards themselves are the real-time witness of the children engaged in their daily activities, thus bearing traces of their souls. “Sometimes I hear the children crying out, appealing to me to bring them back to life,” Kim muses. Then she continues, “My work has more to do with the present than with the past. Through my work I try to explore the issues of displacement that is happening all over the world right now―and of the dislocation that will continue to occur in the coming century. I feel that my job as an artist is to plant the seed in the right spot and tend to it, waiting for the sun and rain.”

With no trace of makeup and her straight hair tied simply behind her neck, Kim has the appearance of a villager from Naepyungni. Yet, during this interview, she talked animatedly about a trip to Mongolia that she plans to take in 1997.

Kim Tae Ik

Chosun Ilbo

May 11, 1995