Anne Duk Hee Jordan

PRESSETEXT

Anne Duk Hee Jordan
The End Is Where We Start From

Press Conferences: TUE, 10.09., 09:30

Whimsical worlds, fantastic creatures, kinetic sculptures: Anne Duk Hee Jordan unfolds a multisensory parcours on the third and fourth floors of KunstHausWien, a museum of Wien Holding, making the unknown and invisible in nature visible. Starting from primordial times, when the first life emerged, the scenery transforms into a magically fluorescent underwater world full of wondrous creatures and diverse phytoplankton. With this exhibition, specially developed for these spaces, the museum – which focuses on the connection between art and ecology – underscores the breadth and depth of this exploration.

“With her immersive, multisensory approach, Anne Duk Hee Jordan offers a new perspective on complex biological interrelationships. The universe created by Duk Hee at KunstHausWien shifts the focus of ecological considerations from humans to the entire ecosystem of our planet, which urgently needs to be protected and preserved. This creates an inspiring bridge from the romanticism of Friedensreich Hundertwasser to contemporary engagement with climate issues,” says Gerlinde Riedl, Director of KunstHausWien.

Anne Duk Hee Jordan designs an artistic universe at KunstHausWien. Here, marine life and oxygen atmosphere meet robotics and symbiosis; in multimedia works, set above and below water, nature is never just a “feel-good oasis,” but a dynamic ecosystem characterized by transience, utilization, fluid sexual identity, and renewal.

The title of Anne Duk Hee Jordan’s first institutional solo exhibition in Austria, The End Is Where We Start From, is taken from the poem Little Gidding by T. S. Eliot.

On the 3rd floor of KunstHausWien, visitors enter an expansive water landscape, where the use of mirrors creates a deceptively real fluid world. Living beings and inanimate “robot animals” move here, they sing and dance – including air plants hanging from wooden sculptures, or hermaphroditic snail species gliding over roots and lava rocks in an aquarium near the entrance, listening to the songs about Jeremy, the famous left-coiled vineyard snail. Much darker and interspersed with volcanic landscapes, the earth forms along the walls leading to the 4th floor. There, Anne Duk Hee Jordan’s auditory installation Worlds Away allows the underwater world to be physically experienced. From a gigantic mattress, one looks into a dark and at the same time luminous world, where fantastic creatures shimmer psychedelically in blue, violet, and green tones. As the human eye gradually adjusts to the new color spectrum, it recognizes floating phytoplankton. Sounds of ships and the singing of marine inhabitants become audible. Also shown on the 4th floor is the multimedia installation Atmospheres of Breathing, consisting of a two-channel video, a crab, a sea cucumber, a pneumatic machine, and a “singing saw.” This refers to the mental and emotional space created in the human body through conscious breathing. The breathing machine connected to a deck chair, consisting of six inhaling blue balloons titled Don’t Panic, refers to the 4-7-8 pranayama breathing technique in yoga, which slows the heartbeat and brings the body into a state of calm and relaxation. The film close-ups of Staying With The Trouble (a reference to Donna Haraway’s publication of the same name) promote understanding and thus appreciation for the connections and relationships between humans and nature. They show the life of monarch butterfly caterpillars, which timely build cocoons, as well as that of frogs, which were the first vertebrates to venture from water to land and have since lived in both worlds. The camera then follows ants carrying leaves – up to ten times their size – into their nest. The plant parts form the substrate for a mushroom cultivation that serves as a food source for the ants and larvae.

Curator Barbara Horvath: “Anne Duk Hee Jordan combines scientific insights with poetic imagination, linking organic nature with romantic technology, merging the human with the non-human, and thus creating an artistic universe imbued with a profound sensitivity to ecological and social issues. Duk Hee’s works shift the focus from humans to the entire ecology of our planet, which urgently needs to be protected and preserved.”

Anne Duk Hee Jordan allows us to experience the world from both a micro and macro perspective. To this end, Duk Hee designs scenarios and works with sculptural, biological, and kinetic elements to address an environment in flux, where humans and non-human beings can develop together. The End Is Where We Start From is conceived as an exhibition like a meditation, encouraging reflection on the cyclical nature of life by showing that every end is also a new beginning.

Anne Duk Hee Jordan on her project at KunstHausWien: “We are closely connected with everything around us, and to truly understand ecology, we must think in continuous cycles. We should not place ourselves above others but recognize that all living organisms are equal. Without them, we would not exist. Symbiosis is the key. If we understood what it means to live in symbiosis with a worm, we would also understand how to treat the land and soil. We would probably stop doing all these silly things, like weeding because its sight bothers us. We would likely allow more diversity in the field instead of growing just one crop and thereby killing the soil. We would have moist skin and move without eyes and limbs. We live on a very old, grumpy, and fragile planet, and we are only a small part of its history.”

As the first Green Museum, KunstHausWien follows the vision of its founder Friedensreich Hundertwasser and examines the relationship between humans, art, and ecology. With the exhibition by Anne Duk Hee Jordan, the exhibition house takes a new path and emphasizes the interactions of various forms of being.

In Cooperation with LEAP Art Foundation

Curator
Barbara Horvath

About the Artist
Anne Duk Hee Jordan was born in Korea in 1978 and lives and works in Berlin. She studied at the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee and subsequently completed a Masters in Fine Arts with Ólafur Elíasson at the Institute for Spatial Experiments in Berlin. Anne Duk Hee Jordan is Professor of Digital Media Art at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe.

Solo and group exhibitions (selection) Canal Projects, New York (2024, in preparation); I will always weather with you, The Bass, Miami Beach, Florida (2023/2024); Liquid Intelligence, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid (2023); Re/Sisters. A Lens on Gender and Ecology, Barbican Art Gallery, London (2023); Worlds Away, Alexander Levy, Berlin (2023); 1.5 Degrees, Kunsthalle Mannheim (2023); Soft and Weak Like Water, 14. Gwangju Biennale (2023); I must transform myself into a life-form that can exist on this planet, HEK - House of Electronic Arts, Basel (2023); Brakfesten / La Grande Bouffe, with Pauline Doutreluingne, Baltic Art Centre and Public Art Agency Sweden, Gotland (2022); Making Kin 3. 0, KIOSK, Ghent (2021); Down to Earth, Gropius Bau, Berlin (2020); Forces Times Distance - On Labour and its Sonic Ecologies, Sonsbeek (2020); Ziggy goes wild, Kunstverein Arnsberg (2019); International Biennale of Contemporary Art in Riga (2018).