Exhibition Information

A letter from mother in North Korea
2020 (출처= 플레이스막1) Inkjet print 38x50cm

Albert Road
2020 (출처= 플레이스막1) Inkjet print 38x50cm

In front of New Malden station
2017 (출처= 플레이스막1) Inkjet print 38x50cm

Sussex Place
2017 (출처= 플레이스막1) Inkjet print 38x50cm

			HoME: History of Middleman on Earth





Across the ‘marginal space’ set between one thing and another, infinite connections may be possible. However, the border as viewed by history has ended up as the fierce and lonely remnants encircling the mainstream and non-mainstream. The psychological space of this alienated dimension, under a category not precisely definable, births ‘heroes’ and ‘losers’ in an instant. This inevitable duality has shown itself continuously—superseding nationality and affiliation, going beyond daily life and the human psychological dimension, and out of societal foundations’ indifferent shadows. The frame in which contemporary society projects refugees, defectors, undocumented migrants, and so on—with the aspect of complex emotion having been denied—has been consumed according to the goals of social phenomena. In that case, who exactly is the essential ‘marginal person’ existing within this marginal space, and where is their home? Shinwook Kim’s solo exhibition, The Marginal Man, begins from the story of Mr. Choi, a North Korean defector whom he met whilst living in the UK. Through interviews and conversations, as well as his letters and writing, photographs, and so on, Shinwook Kim followed and recorded in detail Mr. Choi’s life as a ‘stranger’. Mr. Choi, who works in the New Malden H-Mart distribution hub, around one hour from London city centre, has lived through considerable ups and downs, even more so than other defectors. He left his country, risking his life for the sake of freedom, but still exists as a minority within society. The traces of his life have followed an endless stream of exclusion and marginalization. Rather than concluding the story like the outcast in a bitter melodrama, attention is drawn to the emotions of the displaced individual incurred by the ultimate loss of hometown. Breaking through the barriers of language and race, the artist tries to shed light on the deep problems of isolation brought about by belonging to an ‘inferior’ group.

The Marginal Man aims to focus creatively on those lost within society, on those who have fallen under the radar. It also seeks to summon emotions surrounding the compassion lost within contemporary society and examine the fundamentals of alienization. Shinwook Kim, who has used photography as his language of art, recently began to search for the non-visible within his periphery. Through a series of object-selection using photography, he has investigated the obscure within the visual-perceptual dimension, and for many years has enriched his theme of borders. This work is part of the Borderland series, which focuses on the places and regions defined by borders. Here, the context of region undergoes multi-layered expansion, becomes more intricate, and a more microscopic approach is employed. The project began through a critical viewing of Shinwook Kim’s experiences of living as a stranger in a foreign land. The Marginal Man is originally an inquiry into psychological identity according to societal phenomena. Practically, he finds the agents of border-crossing and migration operating across borders and units within a series of regions, and based on Mr. Choi’s records, he considers a new vision regarding the worth of the place in which these agents, or marginal people, eventually find themselves. In the end, the ‘margin’ Shinwook Kim refers to is not defined but sought. Though unclear, within those outskirts he derives an unrecorded history, and evidence lives of the forgotten. Like a surprise attack when coming face-to-face in reality with a place displayed on a map, it hints at the ‘immediacy of borders being sought’. Because of this, we need to perceive more proactively the ‘marginal people’ still existing within the ‘margin’ known as alienation, conceived by the aura of borders. At the same time, it is the definition latent within us which this summons, or the definition of another dimension of borders, which Shinwook Kim intends to discover alongside audiences through The Marginal Man.



— Zoe Chun, Independent Curator & Director of The Great Commission