Exhibition Announcement
Chasing the Traces
29 January - 30 January 2026
Chamber, Seoul, Korea
How might a trace reach us? In other words, through what passage does existence remain with us, and in what kind of shell and how are we to look at it? <Chasing the Traces> begin with these questions. By imagining (or believing) that things already vanished or about to vanish, things that have lost their complete form and now drift, things minute and fragile, nevertheless occupy this moment, this place, artists have brought them into appearance upon the plane of the present. As Jacques Derrida observed, a trace is not necessarily something that comes only after the fact; it may also signify absence while bearing within it the imprint of another temporal dimension or of signs from elsewhere. This is something the artists are keenly aware of.
<Chasing the Traces> is a temporary event that unfolds from these questions and assumptions, bringing together participants active across diverse fields—artists, curators, documentary filmmakers, and others. It is a space for tracing the residues, constructive memories, and afterimages caught between the axes of past, present, and future within the time and space that surround us.
Comprising lecture, performance, and screening sections with the participation of JeeMin Kim, Hyerim Suh, Soen Lee, Jae Lee, Seunga Yoo, and Uri Han, <Chasing the Traces> take place over just two days at Chamber, a site located on Dongsomun-ro in Seongbuk-gu. Its name meaning “a small, secret room,” and itself a space layered with a long history. Like a stain that seeps into thin paper and vanishes before one realises it was ever there, this gathering too will disperse, leaving behind only a faint afterimage upon the space of Chamber, briefly, like a trace. Curated by Yunseo Choi.
The Chandelier May Never Have Existed, Yet Its Translation Remains
Performance
12:30pm-6:30pm, 29 January 2025 (Thu)
Chamber, Seoul, Korea
(Conducted intermittently within a total duration of six hours; no interruptions to the screening during the performance)
Conceived as a one-day project unfolding within an old building by JeeMin Kim, this performance involves the artist projecting the image of a fictional chandelier using an OHP projector. She then assumes the role of a fictional translator, writing a text about the chandelier. This text is translated into eight to ten different languages, and every thirty minutes the artist hand-copies one translation onto paper.
Here, the thirty-minute interval does not follow Greenwich Mean Time but rather a sense of duration perceived and determined by the artist herself. Visitors may arrive without a fixed appointment and encounter, by chance, the translator-artist in the midst of her ongoing act of translation.
