Woman Crush Wednesday: Seungwon Jung
(clockwise) Siccar Point, 2019, hand knotted tapestry based on digitally generated pattern, steel, 145 x 230 cm, Bed, 2019, digital print on fabric, steel, 370 x 95 cm, Barstow Formation, 2019, hand knotted tapestry based on digitally generated pattern, 72 x 130 cm. All work © Seungwon Jung
Interview by Anna Jacobson
Memories Full of Forgetting is about fragmental knowledge that occurs with memory. Did you have any experience involving your own memory that led you to this project?
Kyung Ae(2016) is a work that led my interest in time, past and memory. Growing up watching the wound in my grandmother, I was very much affected by the way she observed time and life. Since she was diagnosed with early dementia, we spent a lot of time together tracing back her past, often ended up in resentments and tears. Her confusion of time and space ironically made the painful images of her life more vivid and clear.
Kyung Ae(2016) is a work that has begun from my observation to understand my grandmother Kyung Ae, which also means love and respect in Korean. I collected images of her personal effects and old album photos—evidence and traces of her life—and printed it on fabric. Reflecting on her life through the objects, I asked her to grab strands of threads as much as she wants for each of the images. Each piece of the work was hand-embroidered within the time I spent with her. The work completes through the time and relationship between me and my grandmother, recollects and confronts her life through the repetitive but sensuous act of sewing.
Bark 1/54, 2018, digital print on fabric, handmade paper, 28 x 28 cm © Seungwon Jung
Bark 8/54, 2018, digital print on fabric, handmade paper, 28 x 28 cm © Seungwon Jung
You write in your statement “ images are transformed by deconstruction more often than by application” by a “series of repeated gestures of erasure and reconfiguration, including de-threading, unpicking, rethreading and reconfiguring”. I am very interested in this idea. Is this a concept that you have found yourself working with before? At what point in your artistic practice did you evolve to this type of image-making?
In Memories Full of Forgetting (2017-) I wanted to talk more about how time, memory and even the part of our lives that we fail to recall influences the way we observe life rather than focusing on personal narratives. Everyday most of our memories are irretrievably forgotten, thus more forgetting than memories act in our minds. Countless memories that we fail to recall, conceal themselves underneath our senses as it never existed. However, it unconsciously influences our lives by leaving traces and stains, shaping how we remember the past. We are what we remember, but also the other way around, we are what we forget. (This is also the point when I started to think about deconstruction and transformation of images in my projects.)
Lethe, the goddess of forgetfulness in Greek mythology, erases memories of the dead through the river of oblivion. She becomes the bridge herself that sends the dead to the world of a new dimension. Oblivion does not simply end with forgetting, but it leads to the story more about the truth and regeneration. Through my project I wanted to discuss memories but also the areas we fail to remember and the truth about it. The memories that were forgotten but suddenly resurfaces, the primal expression of something that does not exist in reality yet feels real, and the reinterpretation of past journey.
Memories Full of Forgetting #03, 2017, installation, digital print on fabric, paper, 59 x 84 cm © Seungwon Jung
In your project Digital Strata, you begin with a digital image of strata. You then use a computer to generate a textile pattern, which you then make an identical hand-knotted tapestry of that is installed. You then photograph the textiles and publish them online to your website or social media for someone like me to see. How do you see the relationship between digital technology and physical objecthood? How does evolving technology change the work?
Textiles are one of the oldest, most advanced technologies. The technology we use today is an updated version of the technology from the past. A loom was the technology of the moment at one point. Considering how computers work, the binary system and the logic that computers use to function, are very similar to how weaving works. Computers use 1 and 0, when we weave we go up and down.
Digital Strata #02, 2019, inkjet print, 109 x 147 cm © Seungwon Jung
Most of my works contain layers of interoperating analog and digital representations. Even though I do emphasize hand, the repetitive, labor-intensive and meditative process of my work, I am not interested in resisting the inclusion of computer technology to create artwork in response to the fear of technology erasing the physical presence. I’m more interested to explore the ways how the hand and machine interact and relates to each other. I’m interested in the intersections at which digital language meets traditional processes and seeks to discover how the two layers can stand together and overlap each other, rather than denying or removing one side. It's about creating tangible representations of the intangible layers.
(left) Barstow Formation, 2019, hand knotted tapestry based on digitally generated pattern, 72 x 130 cm, (right) Siccar Point, 2019, hand knotted tapestry based on digitally generated pattern, steel, 145 x 230 cm. All work © Seungwon Jung
How does installation play a role in your work? Does the work change each time you install?
Installation slightly changes every time I install my work but I think the idea and possibility that it can change and move is also part of the work.
The flexible and delicate characteristic of textile makes it possible for various transformations. I like the potential that the material already inheres, the way how it can lose its characteristic very easily but in the same time how it can extend its external expression by the medium itself.
(left) Rock, 2019, digital Jacquard woven tapestry, 111.5 x 170 cm, (right) Bed, 2019, digital print on fabric, steel, 370 x 95 cm © Seungwon Jung
WCW Questionnaire:
Describe your creative process in one word.
Repetition.
If you could teach a one-hour class on anything, what would it be?
Hand weaving. The basic structure of woven materials relies on a system of threads crossing each other at right angles. A single strand of thread completes itself into cloth through the weaving of warp and weft. I personally related this process to ‘digital imagery’, ‘pixel’ and ‘photography’ but I’d like to see how the simplicity of this process can inspire other people in different ways.
What was the last book you read or film you saw that inspired you?
Underland: A Deep Time Journey by Robert Macfarlane
What is the most played song in your music library?
“White Gloves” Khruangbin
How do you take your coffee?
Black, no sugar.
