WINDS OF ARTIST IN RESIDENCE 2015 Part2

The Fukuoka Asian Art Museum Artist in Residence Program invites emerging artists from Asian countries and regions to Fukuoka to promote diverse artistic and cultural exchange through collaborative art-making and workshops. We are pleased to announce an exhibition, Winds of Artist in Residence 2015-Part2, highlighting the achievements of the artists, JUJU U from Korea and Chung Ling Jolene Mok from Hong Kong, invited for this year’s second term of the program

Opening Event
November 21st
10AM   Chung Ling Jolene Mok : Video Work Screening (Ajibi Hall) and Artist Talk
11AM    JUJU U: Artist Talk

Chung Ling Jolene Mok
Born in Hong Kong, 1984
2007  BA, in Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
2013  MFA, in Experimental & Documentary Arts, Duke University, USA
Lives and works in Hong Kong

Chung Lin Jolene Mok is a video artist, who specializes in making experimental documentaries about the everyday lives of people around the world. During her time in Fukuoka, she carried out filming each morning and afternoon and completed two art projects; “shop watching,” a video work featuring 16 shops in the Kawabata Shopping Arcade in the morning and “happiness hill,” a video-installation focusing on the Step Garden of the ACROS Fukuoka in the afternoon, based on her 20 days filming of the garden from a fixed observation point at the Fukuoka City Hall building.

Artist Statement
The mission I set for my 70-day life in Fukuoka City is fairly simple – to see as much as possible. By ‘as much as possible’ I DO NOT mean ‘as many places as possible.’  I am here in Fukuoka City to work – to be precise, for making new works – so I basically have not much time to wander around. Just as a side note, the furthest away place I have been to from Fukuoka City is Kasuga City, when and where I gave a workshop at a middle school.

By ‘seeing as much as possible’ I mean witnessing as much decisive moments as possible. My mission was to find out for myself the element that tickles me the most through looking into the on-going everyday life in this very place. So I initiated two projects – a morning project and an afternoon project – which required myself to return to two different parts of the city on a daily basis over the course of a few weeks. Through looking into a nearer neighboring area – the Kawabata Shopping Arcade – from an indoor perspective in the morning; and observing a furtherer masking façade of an architecture – the ACROS – from an outdoor viewpoint in the afternoon, I created videos that showcase my modest discoveries found in the city.

JUJU U
Born in Seoul, 1982
2006　BA, in Craft, Konkuk University, Korea
2013  MFA, in Art Practice, Goldsmiths College, United Kingdom
Lives and works in Seoul

Incorporating everyday items sold at supermarkets around the world, JUJU’s work “Super Museum Project” is created like an item of fine art or craft, normally seen in museums. During her stay in Fukuoka, JUJU has made an installation with a photographic work which features the “Hakata Gion Yamakasa” festival, utilizing 4 effigies taken from “Kids’ Yamakasa” palanquins with her own decoration made with familiar materials. Along with these works, a series of photographs of her past “Super Museum Projects” is exhibited here.

Artist Statement
The Super Museum project started out from the imagination of what would happen to daily necessities that can be commonly seen in supermarkets and stores if they are no longer used and whether they will become like artifacts in museums.

It all started from the Super Museum project_ the United Kingdom series inspired by the armor suit collection of the British Museum of England in 2011 and the tinfoil of Sainsbury’s Supermarket and it has been expanding to various museums and supermarkets around the world such as those in South Korea, Japan, China, Thailand, Nepal, India, and France.

Artifacts in museum are not simply just substances as they involve further meaning. These portray the stories of daily forms of life, extremity of wealth, cycles between continents, war and peace, and cruelty and tributes that have been passed down from the past till the present situation. This project applies current materials to reinterpret the meaning of artifacts in museums that contain such stories.