The exhibition embodies feelings of displacement and serves as a starting point for exploring questions related to identity, belonging, and the abstract nature of distance. As we are already in a deeply polarized world filled with competition and difficulties, and we experience contradictions at physical and psychological levels, this exhibition explores supposedly irreconcilable differences. How can we transform history and the present? The here and now, there and then? Can we bridge the self and other into common subjective experience? In our precarious present, the act of bridging difference and overcoming barriers becomes the main theme of How Far, How Close. The works of art in this exhibition raise doubts about geographic boundaries and evoke complex emotions, which are not only related to self-identification and mobility, but also affect how we search for direction as we negotiate multiple social situations.
This exhibition is curated by guest curators Leo Li Chen and Mijoo Park, with the assistance of Gao Liangjiao, curatorial assistant at Aranya Art Center. The exhibition will be on view from October 29, 2023, through February 25, 2024.
This exhibition is supported by Arts Council Korea and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
