“Pain, unspecified”, Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden - Centre for Contemporary Art, Wiesbaden, Germany, 2022 (Photo: Hyunju Oh)

For the solo exhibition “liebe.mutter” (EN: dear.motehr / literal: love.mother) by Hyunju Oh at the KunstKulturKirche Allerheiligen - Forum for Modern Art and New Music in Frankfurt am Main

Opening speech by Prof. Dr. Dorothea Erbele-Küster on June 28, 2024

"Pain, unspecified" is the title of the performance by Hyunju Oh that we have just experienced here at the KunstKulturKirche Allerheiligen. The performance, like the sound installations in the "liebe.mutter" (EN: dear.motehr / literal: love.mother) exhibition, is open to stories yet to be told and allows reflection on images of mothers. They live on participation.

"Pain, unspecified". It is the unspecifiable and the intangible that makes pain pain. Pain is excessive. It is characterized by the fact that it has no object. Pain is objectless. Although pain is difficult to define, it seeks expression and communication. Here in the performance, it finds it - in the movement of the hands, in the ever-widening tear. Hyunju Oh kneels on the floor, on the unrolled sheet of paper. We follow her hands. The right hand takes the glass, pours water, and carefully wipes the water off, making contact with the floor, and then the paper, moistened in this way, is torn piece by piece. There is something liberating and healing about pouring water. The stone remains. A rending ritual. Pain that cannot be defined by language becomes body language. Pain as the inner language of the body is carried outward with the body.

This earlier work by Hyunju Oh (2019) has just been performed in the church, and thus is given a new context. It is an infinite journey from the cross in the sanctuary until the pain finally finds an outlet and pours out. In the church, pain is usually represented in the liturgy in prayer and in the crucifix on the altar. Here, light pours from above onto the cross. Lament is deeply rooted in the Judeo-Christian language of prayer. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Psalm 22, mentioned above, also says: "My heart is poured out like wax. Pain that is poured out. In the performance, the pain does not turn towards the cross as a path of lamentation, but backwards, away from the altar, towards the exit. At the same time, the direction of the gaze is towards Father, Mother God(it).

We see the performance today also in the context of the exhibition "dear. mother". This requires a connection to the pain of the mother. The pain of the child. Unspecified. Is pain love? the connection? the rupture? I hear the child speak: Mother, it hurts. Your child. I hear the mother speaking: Dear child, you hurt me. It's a rift that's getting bigger and bigger. Your mother. The questions of the child's voice hidden in the closet (audio installation "hier, anderswo" - hear, elsewhere) are already mixed in: "Where am I? Where am I? Is it light there? Is it cruel there?"

“hier, anderswo”, KunstKulturKirche Allerheiligen, Frankfurt am Main, Deutschland, 2024 (Photo: Thomas Orban)

When I saw the performance "Pain, unspecified" by Hyunju Oh in Mainz on the tour of the graduating class of the Art Academy a few years ago, I remembered the Sino-Korean word "Han", which I had learned in the context of the South Korean Minjung movement and theology. In this context, "Han" stands for the unspeakable suffering of the people under the military dictatorship. According to my Korean friends, "han" is never used in everyday life to describe pain. "Han" is the pain of the unheard, the suffering of the people's body, the mother who lost her child in the uprising. Untranslatable. Han. Uprising. Excitement. Anger. Pain. The mother's pain from injustice. The tear in the mother's body caused by a tear in the paper.

It is an art, a survival art, to be able to express pain in such a way that the indefinable, the deeply personal, can be released and opened to the pain of others. Hyunju Oh finds a body language, a sound for it: the paper that tears. In the performance "Pain, unspecified" brings together the many dimensions of the award-winning artist, who lives and works in Frankfurt: she is a poet, performance artist, material artist, sound artist.

“Ein Brief”, KunstKulturKirche Allerheiligen, Frankfurt am Main, Deutschland, 2024 (Photo: Jens Gerberg)

We are surrounded by sound installations here in the ArtCultureChurch of All Saints. The church becomes a listening room. The two works “Unterm Schatten” (Under the Shadow) and “Ein Brief” (A Letter) are premieres. In “Unterm Schatten” (2024), carefully folded blankets are piled up on a bench in the open space of the church. White. Fresh. They cover. Mother covered me. A breathing cavity. What is hidden under the shadow and what can be made to resonate?

"Ein Brief" (A Letter) is a small audio installation that sounds as if it is taking place on an old window pane. We hear a letter with five voices in different languages. The addressee of the letter is named: Dear Mother. For the rest, the Work needs us. In the silence, in our listening, the letters become silent inner prayers. Dear Mother. Your son or daughter. The person addressed is present in the greeting. She remains absent. We hear only the voice of the child. The work "Ein Brief" marks the mother and searches for the mother.

The greeting "Dear Mother" becomes for a moment an address to the Mother of God. Here in the simple space of KunstKulturKirchen, we only perceive the Madonna's protective mantle in the entrance area as we leave. Mary, the Mother of God, becomes present through the sound installation. In church we usually say: Our Father, dear Father. Father in heaven. Here now Mother on earth. Dear Mother. An address to the present absent mother. A letter prayer.

„liebe.mutter“ (EN: dear.motehr / literal: love.mother). The title of the exhibition combines two loaded terms in a play on words. The two words are separated by a period. A breathing space. The two words take on a life of their own. Love has its own value. We almost always hear mother as a form of address. Love.Mother. The full stop can also be read backwards: mother.love.

In the exhibition liebe.mutter, the multivalent performance, sound, and silence artist Hyunju Oh creates designed spaces in the installations. She expands the image of the mother and frees it from stereotypes. Love.Mother.

“Mutter.Boden” (Mother.Ground) is the theme that Hyunju Oh is currently working on. The Sound Silence artist translates the ambivalence, longing and power of the existential theme of "mother" into breath, fragments of speech and imaginative sound images. She resists the reproduction of clichés of mother images. We are invited to listen here in the KunstKulturkirche.

Prof. Dr. Dorothea Erbele-Küster (Johannes Gutenberg University)

OH, HYUNJU

Perspectives & Words

"liebe.mutter" (dear.mother) | KunstKulturKirche Allerheiligen – Forum für Moderne Kunst und Neue Musik | Dorothea Erbele-Küster (EN)