Seoul's Kukje Gallery is hosting an insightful and intellectually rich solo exhibition titled Phantom and A Map, featuring the works of renowned South Korean artist Kyungah Ham. Running from August 30 to November 3, 2024, this exhibition is organized across three of the gallery’s spaces—K1, K3, and the Hanok—offering a complex exploration of the invisible forces that shape society. Ham's body of work, particularly her embroidery series, acts as a lens through which viewers can examine the intertwining of physical reality and the virtual world.

Ham’s Phantom and A Map expands on themes she previously explored in her 2015 exhibition Phantom Footsteps, continuing her investigation into the tension between the visible and the invisible. By choosing the term "phantom," Ham alludes to the unseen connections that power social and political dynamics. Her works reflect how these forces shape the illusion of culture and how individuals navigate these unseen paths.

At the heart of the exhibition is Ham’s Embroidery Project, a long-standing series that she began in 2008. This project is a powerful political and social commentary, revealing the hidden complexities of Korean society. The process is unconventional and risky, with Ham sending her designs through secret middlemen to artisans in North Korea. The completed pieces are returned, often fragmented and incomplete, mirroring the political uncertainties and divided history between the two Koreas. Ham’s finished works, meticulously assembled from these fragments, become both an artistic and political statement, demonstrating the power of collaboration across an impenetrable divide.

One of the standout elements of Phantom and A Map is the way Ham contrasts different forms of communication, particularly analog and digital. In K1, two embroidered pieces inspired by Henri Matisse’s illustrations for Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal are juxtaposed with Ham’s SMS series, which incorporates Donald Trump’s public statements about North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. This juxtaposition highlights the absurdity of contemporary political discourse while also examining how language and sentiment are abstracted through public communication.

The exhibition continues into the Hanok space, where Ham’s tapestries, created in collaboration with Magnolia Editions, explore abstract forms and patterns reminiscent of tears and stains. These woven fabrics offer a visual experience that engages viewers in contemplating the materiality of the pieces while evoking emotions connected to the fragility of human communication in times of political tension.

In K3, the viewer is transported into a digital realm through works that recall computer programming or abstract expressionism. Titled Phantom and A Map / "Did you come by photograph or train?", the works reference John Berger’s exploration of photography as a form of transport and absence. The grids and matrices in these works evoke the structure of digital communication, while their abstract nature questions the authenticity of the virtual world in relation to the physical.

Ham’s process is integral to understanding her art. She has described her embroidery practice as walking “9,999 steps out of 10,000 with nothing confirmed,” reflecting the unpredictable nature of collaborating with North Korean artisans amid fluctuating political climates. This notion of uncertainty and risk is central to the exhibition’s thematic exploration of how individuals and societies navigate the blurred lines between the real and the virtual, the visible and the unseen.

Kyungah Ham's Phantom and A Map offers a profound commentary on the evolving nature of communication in the contemporary world. By bridging the analog and digital, the personal and the political, her works push the boundaries of traditional artistic mediums while raising questions about the forces that shape our perceptions of reality. As the exhibition unfolds across the Kukje Gallery, it invites viewers to contemplate the intersections of culture, power, and human experience in today’s society.

Sayart / Jason Yim, yimjongho1969@gmail.com