“Meine Füße reichen nirgendwohin“, immersive audio drama installation, Saarländisches Künstlerhaus (2024) (Photo: Hyunju Oh)
At the solo exhibition “Meine Füße reichen nirgendwohin” (My feet reach nowhere) by artist Hyunju Oh held at the Saarländisches Künstlerhaus in Saarbrücken on May 8, 2024.
"Mutterboden" (EN: topsoil, literal: mother-ground) - in common German, this is not a particularly poetic word, not a vocabulary that opens up a wide range of associations. At least not until now. The term "Mutterboden" refers to the top, humus-rich and most fertile layer of soil in a cultivated area. The "Mutterboden", also known as topsoil or arable topsoil, is an extremely important basis for the survival of plants, animals and humans. It is a precious, finite resource that is threatened by all kinds of human activity. In order to preserve the "Mutterboden" as much as possible, the way it is treated is protected by law. Section 202 of the German Building Code, entitled "Protection of the Topsoil", states: "The topsoil excavated during the construction and alteration of buildings and other significant changes to the surface of the ground must be kept in a usable condition and protected from destruction or waste". So much for sober legal prose.
When the South Korean artist Hyunju Oh heard the word "Mutterboden" (EN: topsoil, literal: mother-ground) for the first time some time ago, she sensed in it the linguistic equivalent of what she has long been dealing with in her art: the relationship between mother and child, the dreams and traumas of childhood, the necessary distance between parents and children and painful loss, the educational and communicative failures and the enduring connection between family generations, the mutual disengagement for the development of personal autonomy, however free. Hyunju Oh interprets the word "Mutterboden" in such a multifaceted and psychological-social way, which the actual native speakers of German have probably never interpreted and contextualised in this way.
“Meine Füße reichen nirgendwohin“, immersive audio drama installation, Saarländisches Künstlerhaus (2024) (Photo: Hyunju Oh)
Hyunju Oh's thematically wide-ranging aesthetic settings and implementations of the term "Mutterboden" – which is now also the name of a multi-part work project by the artist - negotiate the equally wide-ranging field of tension between the mother who lovingly tills the humus-rich soil for the child - or, as the exact opposite, the mother who pulls the soil out from under the child's feet. Or the father - think of Franz Kafka's powerful "Letter to the Father".
But Oh focuses on and thematizes the mother, the metaphorical-symbolic image of the mother, along with the implications and associations associated with it, for various reasons that are both concrete and personal, and also extend far beyond the private into the general. And of memories, her own memories, especially from childhood. They form the basis of Hyunju Oh's mostly multi- and intermedial art. Often it is even sad, painful experiences from the artist's past that surface in her works and also push, want to push, have to push. These experiences speak or remain silent, but they speak aesthetically. And they do so in a way that is not unique to Hyunju Oh. Rather, it is a way of working with and processing experiences and turning points that we all know to a greater or lesser extent. Not always exactly as they happened to the artist, but somehow familiar to us.
“Meine Füße reichen nirgendwohin” (My Feet Reach Nowhere) is the title of Hyunju Oh's installation created especially for the Saarländisches Künstlerhaus. It consists of spoken text, sound, noise, light, objects in precise constellations and proportions. One could think of the installation as a sculptural stage set, a stage set that is set in motion solely by the acoustic events and in which visitors can move freely. One could also think that the installation is a radio play, an audio drama created for the real space with objects that communicate with each other loudly and quietly, articulating themselves visually and, thanks to the calculated use of spotlights, also shadow-like, as if it were half night. Incidentally, the spoken word, in its conciseness of communication, is not to be valued as more dominant than all the other ingredients of the installation work.
“Meine Füße reichen nirgendwohin“, immersive audio drama installation, Saarländisches Künstlerhaus (2024) (Photo: Hyunju Oh)
At the same time, as is almost always the case in Hyunju Oh's works, there is a story written by the artist herself, a short narrative abstracted from memories, a lyrical, poetic miniature; usually it is an inner monologue that can be heard. The speaker in the installation "Meine Füße reichen nirgendwohin" (My Feet Reach Nowhere) is Anna Hensel. In the second work in the blue studio of the Künstlerhaus - it is called "Wie ist es wohl jetzt dort? (How is it now there?) - Hyunju Oh speaks herself. It is an acoustic letter to a person who was probably once loved and is now lost, a letter spoken in German to a friend. By the way, "How is it there now?" is not part of Hyunju Oh's work cycle "Mutterboden," which began in 2023; she had already completed the installation in 2021. The script, which was expanded for the installation to include a series of acoustic-semantic elementary particles, reads in part: "My childhood memories are fuzzy. / Perhaps because my eyes are bad. / As a child I didn't know how badly I could see. / I didn't realize it myself. / I believed that what I saw was the real world.
And in the new work "Meine Füße reichen nirgendwohin" (My Feet Reach Nowhere), which is visually characterized by many cords and ropes - like connecting lines and umbilical cords - two sentences can be heard, among others: "I woke up; nothing touched the tips of my toes" and: "Breath is the only embrace that holds me." So there is no ground to support us, and even if there were, it might not even be able to support us - a feeling of instability and helplessness. No Mother Ground, although she is always there, in whatever shaky and vague state. Throughout our lives.
Prof. Stefan Fricke (hr2-kultur / Radio Frankfurt)