Blinkers.

Delighted to present Leymusoom Is Holding Us, the solo exhibition of San Francisco-based South Korean artist, Heesoo Kwon. 

About five years ago, Kwon opened the portal to her autobiographical digital dream universe, Leymusoom. Grounded within feminist thinking, the lucid 3D animated environments of the universe doesn’t come to us fully formed both in its ideals and aspirations but it is rather ongoing and fluid. Through interactive video games, digital archives, cinemagraphs, and video passages, the imagined worlds which are inflected by the artist's personal memories become accessible to users and viewers. Leymusoom is often populated by avatars of Kwon and her female ancestors in communion with one another, flowing in the boundless utopic conception the artist has conjured. In this intergalactic expanse, there is swimming, dancing, lounging, and perpetual rejuvenation away from selves that are otherwise restricted by the violence of our abject patriarchal world. In this new exhibition, Leymusoom Is Holding Us, various fragments of Kwon’s envisioned exploratory universe are assembled in a sculptural video installation. A built structure that serves as an inlet into the digital universe hosts a projection of videos the artist has created over the years including a newly rendered corner of the universe made especially for this exhibition. The videos include Leymusoom Mogyogtang [ 레이무숨 목욕탕 ], Leymusoom Bridge [ 레이무숨 다리 ], Leymusoom Ssitgimgut [ 레이무숨 씻김굿 ], and the titular Leymusoom Is Holding Us. 

Mogyogtang, serves as an illustration of ‘Women’s Time’ à la Julia Kristeva, a thinker of significance to Kwon’s universe. In the video, we are glided through a sleekly designed basement-level bathhouse that resembled the women-only baths the artist frequented growing up in Korea. Kwon is joined by her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother in the video as they luxuriate in steam, comfort each other, and cleanse off bad energy as time dissolves away and becomes needless. We see the figures constantly morphing and shedding off old skin as they transition into the reptilian spirit and epitome of Leymusoom--half woman, half reptile. 

In Bridge, the artist creates a pathway between San Francisco’s Chinatown--a place that had a close familiarity to her--and the utopian space of Leymusoom where she’s able to unite with past ancestors. 

Ssitgimgut was created in response to the rise of anti-Asian hate and hostility during the height of the pandemic. The result of which culminated in events like the killing of six women of Asian descent in Atlanta, Georgia. Ssitgimgut is Kwon’s way of showing solidarity and paying her respects to the victims. The title comes from the stem, ‘ssitgim’ which from Korean translates to the act of rinsing off, and the suffix of the word, ‘gut’, translates to ritual. Combining the two terms, 'Ssitgimgut' means a Korean shamanistic ritual honouring the dead with a clean mind that is uninhibited from the causers of their death.   In the video, Kwon enacts the Korean shamanistic ritual whereby a shaman allows the spirit of the dead to inhabit their body. The shaman channels the last moments of the spirit’s past life that led to their death and expresses it. In the video, this is depicted in the form of the violence that took the lives of the Atlanta victims. This ritual serves to confront the climactic end in one’s life and as a result, relieve them of that tragic moment, any baggage attached therein and therefore, bringing about a process of healing. Kwon uses the oasis of Leymusoom’s expanses to further this recuperation and rebirth.