OUT OF EDEN WALK

Seoul, South Korea: 37° 34' 46" N, 127° 02' 26" E

What is the purpose of art? Why do humans feel compelled to make it? Why do we admire it? Why do we collect it?

Such elementary but unanswerable questions tend to pop up often on the Out of Eden Walk, a multiyear journey that involves retracing, on foot, the pathways blazed by our ancestors on their first discovery of the Earth during the Stone Age. After all, whether we’re talking about 9,000-year-old depictions of wild bulls chiseled onto rocks in the Jordanian desert or observational videos looping inside a white-lit gallery in modern Shanghai, the impulse behind such creative work is likely the same: We paint, sculpt, sing, write, and film to better locate ourselves within the vast and mysterious experience of our lives. In this way, artists seem to offer Homo sapiens maps that steer us toward meaning. The destinations are rarely clear-cut. Like all exploration, art deals in uncertainty.

This was truly the case last Sunday in Seoul, South Korea, at the opening of the latest Out of Eden Walk art and storytelling exhibition, WALKING KOREA: Cut Pieces. Hosted at The WilloW Art Space, a former warehouse tucked into the center of the buzzing Gyeongdong vegetable market, the event was the second presentation organized for local artists and storytellers along our global walking trail. (The first was held last year in China.) The basic idea: expand our project’s focus from journalism to include the contemporary arts of the countries we walk through. Add poetry and dance to our reporting. And in this way, highlight the subtleties of the cultures we traverse beyond mere current events. Only this time, current events nearly shut us down.

“The same night we began working on our exhibition at The WilloW, martial law was declared,” says exhibition curator Sooyoung Leam, recalling the attempted December 3 coup by President Yoon Suk Yeol that shocked the nation. “As events unfolded throughout the night, I initially worried whether we would be able to open the exhibition at all. This concern quickly deepened into a more fundamental question: What can an art exhibition do in moments like this?”

As it turned out, South Korea’s political crisis made the exhibition all the more purposeful and urgent.

Artists, journalists, and the general public cycled through the cavernous exhibition space, absorbing multimedia work that sometimes delved into Korea’s painful legacy of political repression. Many of the art lovers shuttled to the exhibition from massive pro-democracy rallies near the parliament building, where lawmakers were attempting to impeach the unpopular president. (The country, for decades a stable democracy, is still reeling. A viral video from the failed coup shows a young woman grabbing the muzzle of a soldier’s rifle, shouting, “Don’t you feel ashamed?”)

Leam had framed the WALKING KOREA exhibition as an exercise in both “cutting out” and “joining” artistic ideas, much as the scissoring of legs simultaneously slice apart and stitch together walked landscapes.

Six Korean artists contributed work, which sometimes touched on the universal themes preoccupying the walk: human migration and restlessness, cultural and gender frontiers, the body, states of exile, and the relationship between landscape and memory. Half of the artists joined the 650-kilometer Out of Eden Walk hiking trail through Korea. Over the summer, they paced off rural roads with Out of Eden Walk founder Paul Salopek and his trekking partner Junseok Lee. The days were blistering.

“Walking with Paul and Junseok in August was like doing penance, but I needed such a challenge at that time,” says Oksun Kim, a photographer and videographer whose exhibition work, titled “Interview,” features women leaders who endured the country’s late-20th century dictatorships. “While walking 40 kilometers over two days, I was given the motivation to move forward just one step at a time, taking strength from those before who walked together. This hot journey opened the lid of the work that had been postponed, and I was able to start my new videos.”

Youngrae Kim, a photojournalist who ping-ponged sleeplessly between shooting street protests and installing his work at the exhibition (“I’m living off coffee”) addresses the loss of cultural memory in Korea. His scanned, banner-like images of traditional Korean plant medicines, titled “Roots,” symbolizes the bewilderment of his 95-year-old grandfather, a herbalist, who today feels like a “stranger in a rapidly westernizing nation he helped build.”

Alexander Ugay, a Kazakh-Korean artist, examines the power of restructured memories among the nation’s diaspora by applying AI technology to archival photos. Cha Ji Ryang’s video and music piece, “Afterlife,” focuses on community and loneliness in a largely abandoned Korean village. Conceptual artist Hyunseon Son built walking canes for the public to use in a collaborative work. And Jinkyoung Jun contributed paintings of people walking away their shared burdens.

“Some might view the artists in the exhibition as participants in Paul’s walking journey,” says The WilloW owner Jaemin Shin. “However, I see it differently. I think Paul has also participated in the artists' ongoing journeys of artistic practice.”

Indeed, in Seoul, the entwined trails among the artists and the Out of Eden Walk seemed to extend even beyond the gallery walls.

The night before WALKING KOREA opened, Salopek and the tired exhibition team were astonished to cross pathways—by sheer happenstance—amid a sea of 250,000 citizens huddled on cold winter streets, chanting to defend their democracy.

Editor’s note:
The WALKING KOREA: Cut Pieces exhibition is open from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. through January 5, 2025, at The WilloW art space in Seoul, South Korea. Address: 38 Gosanja-ro 36-gil, Dongdaemun District, 2F.

In addition, the exhibition is hosting a community workshop for aspiring documentary photographers led by artist and National Geographic Explorer Youngrae Kim. The workshop will introduce eight selected participants to the principles of documentary photography. The session will include an exploration through Gyeongdong Market and the surrounding area, where participants will interview and photograph portraits of people they meet using their cell phones. The exercises aim to facilitate new connections and create an opportunity to “break the ice” by engaging in photography and conversation with strangers. The fieldwork will conclude with participants sharing and reflecting on their experiences together. Date: Saturday, December 28, 2024, 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM Location: The WilloW, 38 Gosanja-ro 36-gil, 2nd Floor, Dongdaemun-gu.

For more details contact: thewillow1955@gmail.com.