The Korean Culture & Information Service (KOCIS), the Embassy of Korea and the Korean Cultural Centre Canada (KCC) are pleased to present Two Rivers, Crossed Landscape at the KCC Gallery from July 17 to August 25.

The final project from The KCC’s 2022-2023 Call for Curators Exhibition Series, Two Rivers, Crossed Landscape was curated by Hyunju Yu, founder of the Center for Eco-Aesthetics and Art Research, and presents ten new works by Canadian media artist Chris Myhr and Korean sculptor Yeonsook Lee.   

Two Rivers, Crossed Landscape

Date: July 17 – August 25, 2023

Venue: The KCC Gallery (101-150 Elgin St., Ottawa)

Opening Reception & Artist talk: July 17, 2023 (17:00~20:00)

Registration: https://forms.gle/2g89ZPLkN97xP9TLA

Inquiry: canada@korea.kr/ 613-233-8008

Curatorial Statement (Hyunju, Yu):

Two Rivers, Crossed Landscape:

A Journey of Culture and Nature

At first glance, Canada—a multi-ethnic country abundant with various races—and Korea, composed predominantly of Korean people, may seem to have nothing in common. However, I have discovered a shared element between these two nations: their iconic rivers, the Han River and Niagara, which represent their respective countries. The Han River in Seoul embraces historical scenes from the past, witnessing both spectacular development and the hardships of modernization. On the other hand, Niagara, situated on the border with the United States, stands as a tourist destination and a gift of nature, currently facing the challenges of commercialism and capitalism.

The exhibition will unfold with a flowing narrative, where these two rivers intersect and the two different communities eventually converge into one river. The name "Canada" is derived from the term "Kanata," referring to a village or small community. As a result, Canada and Korea, celebrating the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations, share the dream of building strong communities, fostering cultural preservation, and protecting the Earth's environment.

Chris Myhr and Yeonsook Lee’s collaboration is presented through video, sound, fabric, scent and small sculptures, creating a synesthetic experience within the vast river of the KCC space. This river carries the imprints of Canada and Korea's history and culture, traversing the exhibition space and merging into a unified flow. In particular, Chris and Lee's exchange will emphasize images and sounds.

Starting with the artists' own experiences with the rivers, we aim to comprehend each other's culture and environment, bringing forth the countless stories that lie submerged beneath the river's surface. Like a game of ping pong, these stories, images, and materials are individually researched and ultimately exchanged. These contemporary issues have the potential to shape our history. In other words, the physical and cultural differences between Canada and Korea ultimately return to the fundamental nature of human life and the environment.

By observing the river's journey from civilization to modern society, we are reminded of our shared dream for a sustainable future that transcends borders. This exhibition serves as a point of contact between Canada and Korea, where we reflect on the shadows of history carried by the river and envision the coexistence of humans and nature in the future.

About the Works 

Chris Myhr

1.    Ab-Solutes (Arctic Stratum)

Single-channel video composition featuring animated images of skin samples from marine mammals used by researchers to study mercury toxicity in the water systems of the Canadian Arctic.

2.   Alluvium (Chiasm)

Four-channel video featuring the horizon lines of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario looking north, south, west and east. Composition is based on the symbology of the Korean national flag: balance and tension between opposing forces, principles of movement, harmony, change and growth.

3.   Alluvium (Undercurrent)

Collaborative intermedia work featuring textile sculpture and video projection. Imagery features current patterns captured along the Niagara River and Horseshoe Falls, Niagara Falls (Ontario).

4.   Ab-Solutes (Lake Erie)

Found object sculptures featuring hydrocarbon debris collected along the western shoreline of Point Pelee peninsula, Lake Erie (Ontario).

5.   Sounding Waters: Niagara River (Canada)

Sounding Waters: Han River Bridges (Seoul, South Korea)

Two-channel sound design combining two soundscapes featuring underwater recordings captured along the Niagara River, and recordings from the metal structures of the bridges along the Han River that runs through Seoul.

Artist Statement by Chris Myhr

The works in the exhibition deal with themes of complex interconnectivity and reciprocity and commemorate the 60th anniversary of peaceful diplomatic relations between Canada and South Korea.

Sound, imagery, and subject matter were gathered along the Niagara and Han River systems, the Great Lakes, and various water systems in the Canadian North.

Rivers, estuaries, and horizon lines are deployed as metaphors for diplomatic and broader human/non-human interrelations that function most effectively and sustainably when there is equilibrium and balance achieved between the forces of “give” and “take”.

The work also ruminates on the idea that, when we consider the flow of water across and between land masses, borders drawn on maps by humans are inconsequential, and are – by nature - porous and dynamic.

Yoensook Lee

6.      Fabric installation 1

Vanished landscape from void space

Recycled fabric from pet bottles, variable size, 2023.

7.      Fabric installation 2

Vanished landscape from the Sea

Recycled fabric from pet bottles, screen size, 2023.

8.      Scent work

Wind from the water

Customize scent, diffuser, fabric cover and light, 2023

9.      Small Sculptures

Fluorescent Rolling stone

Resin casting, 3D scanning and printing, 20 x 30x 18cm, 2023

10.  Light box

Accumulated light

3 designed fabric patch work covered of wall boxes, variable size, 2023 

Artist Statement by Yeonsook Lee

Two rivers crossed landscape is a psychological space beyond the visible rivers of Han and Niagara to me. The journey to uncover the significance of water's memory can be traced back to the beginning of human history and narrates the story of our existence. The scent of water that I perceive upon entering the exhibition hall enhances my recollection of place, transcending time and space. It serves as a device, guiding me on a journey to my inner psychological realm associated with water. The image that symbolizes the cycle of life and transcending time is represented by a cloud formed when water evaporates and rises into the atmosphere. Recycled cloth is used as a metaphor for the hidden human greed that lies behind the paradoxical pain of a polluted river dyed pink. Furthermore, as Val Plumwood asserts, "a space becomes a place not only through its human beings but also through its non-human inhabitants." The narrative is emphasized as a means of signifying a place and expresses the ecological sensibility experienced within it. In other words, we aim to create a space for contemplation where sound, light, scent, water, and air coexist harmoniously, allowing you to experience a profound sense of place.

About the Artists

Hyunju Yu

Hyunju Yu was born in 1968 and raised in Daejeon. She majored in English Language and Literature at Hannam University and studied Aesthetics at Hongik University. She is a Korean independent curator based in Daejeon. While studying Aesthetics and art theory in graduate school, she worked at the gallery 'I-gong' in Daejeon for 2 years. In 2007, as an independent curator, she invited Insa Winkler, a German land artist, marking the beginning of her career as an art critic and curator. She obtained her Ph.D. in 2009 and has been teaching students at Hannam University since then. Since 2022, she has worked as a research professor at Hannam University, supported by a Research Professor Grant from the NRF (National Research Foundation of Korea) for the period 2022-2027.

She had a turning point in 2012 when she experienced ecological art at the Kassel Documenta. Upon her return from Germany, she established the Center for Eco-Aesthetics and Art Research. Since then, she has organized exhibitions related to ecological issues and environmental problems, including the series "Sustainable City and Flower" from 2013 to 2018. In 2022, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art commissioned her institute to archive the entire Korean ecological art called "The Flow and Present of Korean Ecological Art" (2022), and she was in charge of publishing the first Korean ecological art archive book.

One of her notable shows, "Message from Mars," was supported by KRICT (Korean Research Institute for Chemical Technology). This exhibition explores the convergence of art and science, particularly chemistry, with the subtitle "Carbon Art Project" aimed at addressing climate change through chemistry.

Another recent art project she spearheaded is "The Memory of Fire," supported by the Cultural Heritage Administration, as part of the "2020 World Heritage Festival-Jeju Volcanic Island and Lava Tubes" event program. This project offered a message of hope to those affected by Covid-19, emphasizing the importance of coexistence between humans and non-humans in overcoming the pandemic crisis.

Recently, Yu Hyunju has developed an interest in multidisciplinary artwork, ecology, science, community, and the relationship between urban and natural environments, among other subjects. With funding from the ACC (Asia Culture Center), she authored the essay "Poetry Composed of Matter: A Study on Yunchul Kim's 'Mattereality' from the Perspective of Bruno Latour's 'Ecology' Concept." (Yunchul Kim is participating in the Venice Biennale 2022).

In 2022, she took on another challenge by participating in the curator open call organized by the Korean Cultural Center in Canada. Winning a special exhibition to commemorate the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Korea and Canada, she aims to contribute to cultural communication between the two countries through the exhibition "Two Rivers, Crossed Landscape."

Chris Myhr

Chris Myhr is a media artist based in Hamilton, Ontario (Canada) whose studio practice seeks intersections between art, science, and ecology through photography, the moving image, sound, and media installation. He is particularly invested in current discourses around materiality and the entangled relationship between the human and non-human realms (i.e., objects, matter, and things).

Since 2012, Myhr has been developing an extensive body of work titled “Point-Line-Intersection” that examines our complex interconnections with the Earth’s hydrosphere. The works in “Point-Line-Intersection” revolve around themes of complex interconnectivity, and explore the paradoxical tension between water as life, vitality and industry, as well as a source of immense and unpredictable destructive power.

The projects in “Point-Line-Intersection” have explored the river/floodplain systems of post-Touhoku Earthquake Tokyo; shipwreck sites off the coast of Nova Scotia; toxic blue-green algae blooms and hydrocarbon sediment in the Great Lakes; contaminants in snowfall along the Athabasca River in Alberta’s oil sands region; and - most recently – the waters of the Nakdong River and Han River in South Korea.

He is currently working with researchers in the Aquatic Contaminants Division at the Canada Centre for Inland Waters (Burlington) on a series of ecologically-motivated projects titled “Ab-Solutes” and “Alluvium”. The projects examine the ways in which invasive activities such as resource extraction not only impact the immediate terrestrial environment on which they occur, but also other interconnected Earth systems - ruminating on the sheer unknowability of this complex feedback loop between human activity and the environment.

Myhr’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and was awarded the Prefix Prize in Photography in

2021 by the Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Media Arts at McMaster University.

Yeonsook Lee

Yeonsook Lee, who majored in sculpture and fine art at Hongik University in Seoul and Goldsmith's College in London, is engaged in spatial installation and convergence art that incorporates various media. With the theme of her daily experience, place memory, and change in perception, her previous work symbolically revealed her awareness on social problems by combining individual memories with specific events through discarded everyday objects. 

Since then, the artist, who has paid attention to the architectural space and accumulated personal narratives shown by the place, has a synesthesia about the individual life that exists in concrete events or social phenomena through video media, sculpture, space installation and performance that create a narrative structure. Based on our memories, time, and present and future narratives, she creates historical, private and public site-specific installations. And through workshops with various people, public memories expanded to individual experiences become memories of places penetrating through history and create another narrative.

As she said, “Space becomes a place through memory,” Lee has been exploring meaningful places. Based on her personal experience and memory of place, she is conducting installation work that reproduces a specific space, as well as synesthetic elements and performance videos that can evoke memories such as light, sound, and smell. 'Nobody Knows 2021', which reinterpreted the history of the former Armed Forces Gwangju Hospital, presented in the 2021 Gwangju Biennale GB Commissioner's Special Exhibition. Lee participated in a number of solo and planned exhibitions, such as 'Space and the Place' and 'Salad Ball'.

               Chris Myhr        Yeonsook Lee   Hyunju Yu 

Two Rivers, Crossed Landscape

Date: July 17 – August 25, 2023

Venue: The KCC Gallery (101-150 Elgin St., Ottawa)

Opening Reception & Artist talk: July 17, 2023 (17:00~20:00)

Registration: https://forms.gle/2g89ZPLkN97xP9TLA

Inquiry: canada@korea.kr/ 613-233-8008

Korean Cultural Centre Canada

101-150 Elgin Street, Ottawa, ON K2P 1L4 

canada@korea.kr/ 613-233-8008