Kim Jin-A is an artist who explores the lethargy of an individual’s ordinary life. Kim releases her thoughts on lives to various visual art projects. In particular, she navigates the structure of the psychological root of learned helplessness and labor as an action to sustain life, and she directs them into special incidents. The artist doesn’t define such helplessness as an emotional state, but as a learned energy of frustration and a step in the course of activities. The audiences of Kim’s exhibition face some ordinary activities, yet activities that are not expected at an exhibition like eating and talking, listening to music, gathering hydroponic crops, trimming and wrapping them to take home.
<Methods of measuring everyday labor: Cucumber Kimchi> (2017) Participative performance and installation ⓒJin-A Kim
The beginning of these approaches is the learning and experiences of the artist that have accumulated to a complex identity. Kim is a Korean, a woman, the eldest daughter, born in the 80s, an artist, a community gardener and married. <A meal, the other cooked>, a performance the artist showed in four series, is one of the examples of Kim showing the development of the approach to the learning and the experiences.
<A meal, the other cooked ver.1> (2017) Jin-A Kim prepares for a performance ⓒJin-A Kim
The first version of <A meal, the other cooked> was first performed at 《Friendly Helplessness》, which I curated in 2017. Kim was searching for the sense of duty and discomfort of the new identity; “a newlywed-a wife”. Despite the fact that the husband never asked for breakfast, I, the curator, woke up early in the morning, suffering to prepare the meal. That is from growing up watching a woman preparing the meal, who was a ‘wife’ and also a ‘mother’. Kim says the cooking during the performance is a confrontation with a learned and a ‘hereditary’ role and duty. The menu of the performance is ‘rice with butter and soy sauce’, which projects the suffering and lethargy by taking the role and duty. The menu is a simple meal, showing the conflict between mandatory labor and fatigue of an individual. As a child, the menu is a delicious meal from the memories back then. The artist provided the meal, not as a ‘wife’, but as an ‘artist’ or ‘stranger-other’ and the audiences were eating a warm meal and talked about the topics given by the artist.
<A meal, the other cooked ver.3> (2018) performance ⓒJin-A Kim
After the second version of <A meal, the other cooked> at “Art Space Tetra” in Fukuoka, Kim revealed the third version in 《Seodaemooninn Artfair》, 2018. There, Kim wore a mask to emphasize the identity of ‘stranger-other’ and performed in an extraordinary speed. The artist goes around saying, “Did you eat?” or “There’s the food, help yourself”, she erased the individual ‘Kim Jin-A’ from the audiences. Kim removed the identities emphasized in two versions before; young, newlywed, daughter and wife and she led the audience to focus on the ordinary action, like eating, with added unusual elements to think deeper about these actions.
<A meal, the other cooked ver.4> (2019) performance ⓒJin-A Kim
The fourth version was curated by Gam Yoon-Kyung of It’s A PIECE OF CAKE at a baking studio “Ca-key” in 2019. There, Kim was again a ‘stranger-other’ and also a ‘host preparing meals’ meeting the audiences from the bar herself. Former series were serving the prepared meal but the fourth, the artist shows the labor of preparing the meal and delivering the food, while the audiences are talking about their daily lives. Because the artist was a woman, at first, the project was read in the code of feminism. But as the series develops, it tries to expand the discourse to reveal the hidden labor that was meant to maintain the everyday lives of modern people in modern society. <A meal, the other cooked> is not the only example but <Oh this rustic display>, <Source of dainty food>, <Source of exchange> and <Farm of the wanderer> also reveals the hidden labor of crops and farming from daily lives. Her series of artistic incidents directed by herself have occurred in various places.
<Methods of measuring everyday labor: Cucumber Kimchi> (2017) Participative performance and installation ⓒJin-A Kim <A meal, the other cooked ver.1> (2017) Jin-A Kim prepares for a performance ⓒJin-A Kim <A meal, the other cooked ver.3> (2018) performance ⓒJin-A Kim <A meal, the other cooked ver.4> (2019) performance ⓒJin-A Kim
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