Jewyo Rhii   "Airport Romance"
April 11 – May 17, 2008

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The second work relevant in this context is “Airport Romance” (2007) which, after competing for the Hermès Art Award in South Korea, will be presented here for the first time outside of Asia: a big installation that mainly consists of a song, together with a text book with lyrics, an unidentified object and a series of drawings of the angry face of a middle-aged man. Both love stories are actually reflections of the artist’s experience of a nomadic existence led for over fifteen years: the reflections which accumulate not only feelings of liberation but also moments of excitement of getting in touch with the new – people and experiences – together with a constant sense of loss of what the artist had.

Nomadic life in the interstitial spaces of global politics also confronts us with unfairness, discrimination, even humiliation on a daily basis. Presence is merely an irritating moment just before another forced absence. Airports are often described as “non-places” – due to their heavily padded, spatial neutrality and their character of sites of passage. Today, under the intensified security sanctions of recent years, not only for Rhii airports have become places a whole industry of preparing and processing human beings for their next destination, and as such, they also again figure as sites and sources of Rhii’s desperation for love and its loss.”
(Miya Yoshida)