Hyelim Cha

〈Tumbleweed〉, Video, 03:54, 2018

Tumbleweed is a video work filmed in the Geumcheon-gu area of Seoul. As Korea went through rapid industrialization, high economic growth and the contradictions of capitalism intensified at the same time, casting a long and dark shadow on laborers. In Geumcheon, which can be regarded as a cross-section of Korea’s industrial society, small-scale subcontractors and IT companies coexist. Although their appearance might have changed over time, the hardships of the laborers remain unchanged. While laborers are swiftly replaced by other laborers, like the women in Remedios Barro’s paintings who weave the garment for the earth in a tower, it is because of the hard work of the workers that this planet is able to remain dressed without exposing itself. In the video, the Atari Shock, a large-scale economic downturn in the North American video game industry in 1983, Ishi, the last survivor of the North American continent’s Ihi tribe, who lived in hiding in a bear’s lair for 48 years and was displayed as a living artifact at the Anthropological Museum, the packed export bridge of Gasan-dong are interwoven. The rapid growth of Korean society has created a condition where social issues, including invisible oppression, remain overlooked. Cha’s work pays attention to and seals the gaps created as a result of such ‘jump cuts’ or compressed growths.