Catalogue > At random

A procession of non-conforming people – from musicians, artists and poets to anti-miliary activists, environmentalists and diasporic, queer and trans people – carry a coffin together through the ruins of what turns out to be an abandoned resort on the South Korean island of Jeju. It soon becomes clear that this is no traditional Confucian funeral. Age and gender roles are subverted, the coffin is draped in dark camouflage colours and the traditional portrait of the deceased is replaced by a black mirror. In the field between funeral ritual, political protest and carnival performance, the people in the procession who have come together to undo a world order built upon hierarchy and division, march through the ruins of capitalist modernity. Time and place begin to lose their stability as mythical Dokkaebi deities pass through the building and heavy rain and wind blow through its cavities. As if possessed the group, in a moment of revolutionary fervour, overthrows and dismantles the scaffolding of the prevailing order and other stories begin to take form. Jane Jin Kaisen’s interdisciplinary work not only activates Jeju’s violent history as a site of oppression and rebellion, but is a work with universal power.

Jane Jin Kaisen (born 1980 in Jeju Island, lives in Copenhagen) is a visual artist, filmmaker, and Professor of the School of Media Arts, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Spanning the mediums of video installation, narrative experimental film, photographic installation, performance, and text, Kaisen’s artistic practice is informed by extensive interdisciplinary research and engagement with diverse communities. She is known for her visually striking, multilayered, performative, poetic, and multi-voiced feminist works through which past and present are brought into relation. Engaging topics such as memory, migration, borders, and translation, she activates the field where lived experience and embodied knowledge intersect with larger political histories. Through multi-year projects and collaborations, she has engaged topics such as transnational adoption, the Korean War and division, the Jeju April Third Massacre, and Cold War legacies. Another recurring focus revolves around nature and island spaces, cosmologies, feminist re-framings of myths, and engagement with ritual and spiritual practices. Working from the thresholds of mediums and forms, disciplines and sensibilities, her works negotiate and mediate the means of representation, resistance, and recognition, thus contouring alternative genealogies and sites of collective emergence. Kaisen is a recipient of the New Carlsberg Foundation Artist Grant (2023) and a 3-year work grant from the Danish Arts Foundation (2022). She represented Korea at the 58th Venice Biennale with the film installation Community of Parting (2019) alongside artists Hwayeon Nam and siren eun young jeong in the exhibition History Has Failed Us, but No Matter curated by Hyunjin Kim. She was awarded “Exhibition of the Year 2020” by AICA - International Association of Art Critics, Denmark for the exhibition Community of Parting at Kunsthal Charlottenborg. Kaisen has participated in the biennials of Liverpool, Gwangju, Anren, Jeju, among others. Recent solo exhibitions include Jane Jin Kaisen: Braiding and Mending at The Image Centre (2023), Of Specters or Returns at Le Bicolore (2023), Currents at Fotografisk Center (2023) Parallax Conjunctures at Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (2021), Community of Parting at Art Sonje Center (2021) and Kunsthal Charlottenborg (2020). Other recent exhibitions and screenings: Dislocation Blues: Jane Jin Kaisen, Tate Modern (2023), Ceremony (Burial of an Undead World), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (2022), Checkpoint: Border view from Korea, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg (2022), Unmoored Adrift Ashore, Or Gallery Vancouver (2022). She holds a PhD in artistic research from the University of Copenhagen, Department of Art and Cultural Studies, an MFA in Interdisciplinary Studio Art from the University of California Los Angeles, an MA in Art Theory and Media Art from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, and she participated in the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program. Other exhibition and screening venues include: Kunsthal Aarhus, Nikolaj Contemporary Art Center, The National Museum of Photography (DK), Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlinale, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Times Art Center, Museum Ludwig, Videonale (DE), Asian Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Gana Art New York, DePaul Art Museum (USA), ARKO Art Center, Seoul Museum of Art, Incheon Art Platform, Seoul New Media Art Festival, Leeum Samsung Museum of Art, Asia Culture Center, Coreana Museum of Art, DMZ International Documentary Film Festival (KR), Silencio Club, Palais de Tokyo, Foundation Fiminco (FR), Malmö Konstmuseum, Malmö Konsthall, Inter Arts Center, Kalmar Art Museum (SE), Sørlandet Art Museum and Oslo Kunstforening (NO), Finnish Museum of Photography (FN), ParaSite (HK), Kyoto Arts Center, Kyoto Museum of Art, Fukouka Museum of Art, Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, (JP), Times Museum Guangzhou, Beijing 798 Art Zone (CN), Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Art, Taiwan International Documentary Film Festival (TW), Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (PH), The National Gallery (Indonesia), and Townhouse Gallery (EG).