”Alight” Public Art Installation
October 1 - November 1, 2020
Seongbuk City Plaza, Seoul, S. Korea.
The immersive space created by the installation disrupts the public sphere to bring attention to long ignored and silenced narratives of colonization and state-sponsored violence. Before and during WWII, Korean and other Asian girls and women were abducted by the Japanese colonial military and imprisoned for sexual purposes.
“Alight” combines portraits of former Korean “comfort women”, current-day activists and archival images immediately after the comfort women’s liberation at the end of WWII. The larger than life portraits of the survivors remind us this violence looms large in our midst despite the passage of decades while the activists keep the fire and narrative alight and alive. The archival images act as historical reference and foil to the passage of time as state-sponsored violence is repeating in many places in the world today, including during this installation in Armenia that is under attack by the colonial ambitions of Azerbaijan and Turkey.
Curated by Monica Hye Yeong Jun
Sculpture design concept by Narineh Mirzaian
“Alight” combines portraits of former Korean “comfort women”, current-day activists and archival images immediately after the comfort women’s liberation at the end of WWII. The larger than life portraits of the survivors remind us this violence looms large in our midst despite the passage of decades while the activists keep the fire and narrative alight and alive. The archival images act as historical reference and foil to the passage of time as state-sponsored violence is repeating in many places in the world today, including during this installation in Armenia that is under attack by the colonial ambitions of Azerbaijan and Turkey.
Curated by Monica Hye Yeong Jun
Sculpture design concept by Narineh Mirzaian
