My Names

In conjunction with the Baik Art Residency, the Smith Gallery will feature My Names, a video installation by South Korean artist Inhwan Oh. The project began at a residency in 2010 at the Residency in Kyoto Art Center, Japan. The first video is an interview of Japanese women, who have changed their (family) names multiple times; the other video is a documentation of the artist’s performance, writing and erasing—through the act of ironing—the names of women introduced in the interview.

Inwhan Oh (b. 1965) works on participatory and site-specific projects utilizing the context of particular space and time. Oh initiates from the issues of identity and further expands to the fundamental question of correlation between the regulations of society and the arts, attempting to deliver conceptual and cultural critical works.

Based on his personal experiences, Oh translates or dismantles the cultural code formed in the connective context of relationship between individual identity and group within the patriarchal society. With this, he also proceeds on with concrete and practical works pertinent to the daily experiences implanted with keywords of the contemporary art including, difference, variety, communication and more.