Lure of the Lawn
This installation realises imaginary space, for an account of living as a woman in the hidden places of my neighbourhood. In the museum, the lawn spills out from the room, and lures the audience to step in. 12m x 10m of green sea in the room embraces the hanging bed installation. There are dialogues between two historical women, Hyeseok Na (1896-1948), a landscape painter who lived through the colonial period in Korea, and Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797), the first British feminist on the wall.
This space marks as the drift of a sheltering place and floating comfort. But it is also an alienated object in open public space. Through this performative reclaiming of both dead figures, Hyeseok Na and Mary Wollstonecraft, the place where we walk and explore locally becomes a stage for action, imagination, and new processes for unfolding a story.
*This installation forms part of an ongoing work, "Strangers in the Neighbourhood"; this introduction serves also as a point of entry to "Strangers in the Neighourhood".*
Strangers in the Neighbourhood and Lure of the Lawn are parts of a long-term conceptual project, which imagines Hackney as a narrative space. This narrative hypothesis created an imaginary space for Hyeseok Na to encounter Mary Wollstonecraft. The project started as a piece of social research, which I constituted as an exchange of letters, psycho-geographical walks, and workshops with neighbours to generate discourses around space and identity. I travelled local streets with a bed and documented this ‘drift’ as a photographic series.
The exchanges of friendship, and the imaginary setting of intimacy between Mary and Hyeseok was represented in the rough shape of a bed on the street. A mattress was laid down on the Kingsland Road in Dalston, Newington Green and other small cul-de-sacs and lanes in the N16 postal area of North London. It symbolises the drift of a sheltering place and floating comfort. But it is also an alienated object in open public space. Through this performative reclaiming of both dead figures, Hyeseok Na and Mary Wollstonecraft, the place where we walk and explore locally becomes a stage for action, imagination, and new processes for unfolding a story. But seeing the space through Hyeseok’s eyes made me to discover a way in which travellers can live with residents and how ‘otherness’ can be a familiar identity in this local area.
Hyeseok and Mary emerged from different backgrounds, in consecutive centuries, speaking and writing different languages within divergent cultures. I believe they share an artistic gaze upon, and orientation towards, the world; this is in spite of the difficult circumstances of their lives. I was searching for the nature of ‘locality’ via this fictional meeting. The conjunction of interior and exterior, private space and public space are also called into question. The forces of ‘development’ and ‘redevelopment’ are seen to threaten the cohesiveness and history of communities. Within the framework of my research, a tea party was thrown for women from Stoke Newington of various backgrounds; a facilitated discussion of the experience of women from minorities and/or migrant populations in the neighbourhood was carried out.
This work is a snapshot of a ghost story, and a travelogue, but also an account of living as a woman in the hidden places in my neighbourhood. I started to travel with my bed to reify the experience of sleepwalkers and to represent trans-historical characters.
This space marks as the drift of a sheltering place and floating comfort. But it is also an alienated object in open public space. Through this performative reclaiming of both dead figures, Hyeseok Na and Mary Wollstonecraft, the place where we walk and explore locally becomes a stage for action, imagination, and new processes for unfolding a story.
*This installation forms part of an ongoing work, "Strangers in the Neighbourhood"; this introduction serves also as a point of entry to "Strangers in the Neighourhood".*
Strangers in the Neighbourhood and Lure of the Lawn are parts of a long-term conceptual project, which imagines Hackney as a narrative space. This narrative hypothesis created an imaginary space for Hyeseok Na to encounter Mary Wollstonecraft. The project started as a piece of social research, which I constituted as an exchange of letters, psycho-geographical walks, and workshops with neighbours to generate discourses around space and identity. I travelled local streets with a bed and documented this ‘drift’ as a photographic series.
The exchanges of friendship, and the imaginary setting of intimacy between Mary and Hyeseok was represented in the rough shape of a bed on the street. A mattress was laid down on the Kingsland Road in Dalston, Newington Green and other small cul-de-sacs and lanes in the N16 postal area of North London. It symbolises the drift of a sheltering place and floating comfort. But it is also an alienated object in open public space. Through this performative reclaiming of both dead figures, Hyeseok Na and Mary Wollstonecraft, the place where we walk and explore locally becomes a stage for action, imagination, and new processes for unfolding a story. But seeing the space through Hyeseok’s eyes made me to discover a way in which travellers can live with residents and how ‘otherness’ can be a familiar identity in this local area.
Hyeseok and Mary emerged from different backgrounds, in consecutive centuries, speaking and writing different languages within divergent cultures. I believe they share an artistic gaze upon, and orientation towards, the world; this is in spite of the difficult circumstances of their lives. I was searching for the nature of ‘locality’ via this fictional meeting. The conjunction of interior and exterior, private space and public space are also called into question. The forces of ‘development’ and ‘redevelopment’ are seen to threaten the cohesiveness and history of communities. Within the framework of my research, a tea party was thrown for women from Stoke Newington of various backgrounds; a facilitated discussion of the experience of women from minorities and/or migrant populations in the neighbourhood was carried out.
This work is a snapshot of a ghost story, and a travelogue, but also an account of living as a woman in the hidden places in my neighbourhood. I started to travel with my bed to reify the experience of sleepwalkers and to represent trans-historical characters.