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Minha Park

Discourse on Twin Mirrors

Installation vidéo | mov | couleur et n&b | 11:30 | Coree du Sud, USA | 2020

Beginning from the research of the 11th-century Iraqi optic physicist, Discourse on Twin Mirrors (2020) reads the moments when light and immaterial images tactically intervene in the physical world. The story of gaze and darkness connects the ambivalent desires for observation and destruction inherent in the history of camera obscura, mirage, and 19th century binocular photography. The visuality found here is reconnected with Medina Wasl, an Iraqi military base recreated in California Mojave Desert by the 21st century Hollywood special effects industry. Doppelgangers are generated here where cinematic attractions become part of an actual physical war. Just as in the old tales that anyone who faces their own doppelganger must meet their death, this piece tells a story of mirrors that can never meet, never reflect each other.

Minha Park’s films and audio-visual installations study how the media, image/sound archives that surround us intervene in our sensory world and shape the reality. Park studied art and film in Los Angeles and continues her artistic career in Seoul. Currently living and working in Berlin, she had a solo show Shadow Planet (2023) at Künstlerhaus Bethanien and participated in the Archive Books’ screening & talk event at Savvy Contemporary. Her works have been presented in exhibitions and screenings at Cité Internationale des Arts, Lux Moving Image, 27th Images Festival, Doosan Gallery, Luckman Gallery, National Museum of Modern & Contemporary Art Seoul, Nam June Paik Art Center, Seoul Museum of Art, Leeum Samsung Museum, and 72nd Edinburgh International Film Festival, etc. Park’s films are in collections including the MoCA Busan, Korean Film Archive, Arko Art Center, and Vtape Toronto.