As Paul Gilding said, the Earth is full of us humans, full of things we made and full of our wastes. Poet Park Nohae laments that in this era of abundant poverty, one neighborhood is dying of malnutrition while the trash bins of the other neighborhood are overflowing. What is worse is that the ‘inflection points’ and ‘unique points’ faced by humans in this era such as the climate change and the pandemic, are accelerating the fall of the world and death of humans every moment like a ticking time bomb.
This crisis caused by "Anthropocene" and "Capitalocene" calls for fundamental reflection on human civilization. The humanism which we have believed to be a noble and pure value without a doubt until now may just be hypocrisy of the exploiter who treats all things and nature as tools or slaves. I began to regard the anthropocentric dualism that has divided and discriminated against the mind and the material, the subject and the object is the main culprit of this crisis. It wasn't until we experienced an unprecedented crisis that we finally began to doubt and reflect on ourselves.
This is exactly the situation depicted in the movie Noah, where the entire Earth is flooded and the mankind faces disaster for the very first time. Noah receives revelation from God to destroy all evil sinners. So Noah tries to ‘save the world’ by killing his family, the only surviving human beings, with his own hands. The world view implied in Noah that the ‘salvation of the world’ is only possible through the ‘end of mankind’ most dramatically manifests the grim dilemma that we humans face today.
Artist Soon-Yeal Yang’s works of Mother Earth are based on this reflection and introspection. Mother Earth suggests means to resolve the fundamental separation between humans and non-humans, and to co-exist and cooperate with all life and things on Earth. This is equivalent to the world of pan-Orientalistic Avatamsaka Sutra where existence of human beings and things are equal and interconnected by decentralized Indra’s net that brightly reflects each other, and it is also linked to the Western’s ‘New Materialistic’ reason that breaks away from human-centeredness and calls for a shift to object-centeredness.
In particular, the works of Mother Earth-Ottogi installed in the courtyard of the provincial government building and on the lake aspire to overcome the crisis of the times through the restoration of the pancosmic motherhood. It is the motherhood that transgresses the boundaries of family, feminism beyond the boundaries of gender, and Afrofuturism that embraces racial discrimination. Only then it will be a ‘salvation of the world’ that promises ‘salvation of the mankind’ and not the Noah-like salvation that premises on the ‘end of mankind.’ Ottogi symbolizes the peaceful and prosperous future, wishing for the restoration of such extended motherhood and salvation of mankind. I wish the residents of Gyeongbuk province and people around the world to live happily together in such a world.
Yun Chaegab (Curator)
Comments