Exhibition Information

			A national trait that no one doubts is politically determined. Michelle Foucault follows the process of the formation and circulation of the concept of madness in "History of madness." In ancient times, madness was a divine symptom that dictated fundamental knowledge. Even in the Renaissance, dialogue with madness was only a means of seeking truth, not a disease. But by the 17th century, when rationalism began to develop, madness became the subject of treatment and confinement. Furthermore, poor eyesight changed its name from disability to discomfort as technology developed, and genetics revealed that racial differences were nor absolute and socially constructed. As such, the circumference of normality is based on variable circumstances arbitrarily set by dominant power. Nevertheless, society constantly sets up acceptable categories and draws a perimeter to distinguish normal from abnormalities.

The dichotomous discernment that made both inside and outside clear saved the world from the ignorance that put the human race in fear by overlaying the system in the obscure world. At least in Plato's century. Now the clear circumference is the beginning of fascism. The Nazis separated the non-Aryans from their own people and pushed them  into the Holocaust, and the monotheism that they should reject communism and unite as "one people" in the direction of capitalism was directed toward dictatorship. Transforming unpredictable nature into controllable knowledge, a highly developed civilization exerts an overpressure to forget differences and confine the subject of revenge to a binary confrontation. A solid dichotomous way of thinking, acting as a mechanism to justify violence, gives absolute power around the circumstance of fragile normality, constantly expelling minorities from their ordinary lives.

The expulsion of numerous minorities has been tolerated under the tyranny of normality, which has so far served as a force to define an uncertain future through universal transmission. the circumference of normality, like the bed of Prokrustes, threatens even the interior considered safe. Prokrustes laid a passerby on an iron bed and killed him by cutting or stretching his body to fit the bed, but was killed in the same way by Teseus. Our stupidity that resembling a prokrustace lets a wretched heart laughing at insanity torture itself by detaining even its own emotional pain. As such, normality is so natural that it is far beyond sense, but close enough to interfere with everyone's behavior. The circumference which was hidden by naturalness gradually pushes away the life of the surrounding area and demands a single life style in the face. Therefore, we ask for your attention to the movement that appears around us.

Park Seul-gi raises a private voice that is excluded from the circumference of normality. Lee Ji-yang and Yoo Hwa-soo show off their abnormally called bodies and put forward the possibility that the norm of normality has rejected at the forefront. Lee Hae Min Seon not only points out the fragility of the boundary across the summit and atypical but also notes the attitude that each life thrown into the boundary-cleared territory was forced to take. Mooney Perry seeks a will for coexistence beyond mechanical dichotomy by appearing again in the network of relationships or by looking back on the interdependent position of mushrooms and trees.

Furthermore, <My circumference is far and near> asks questions about the norm of normality and the universal standards established by mankind in the movement surrounding it taking a glimpse of the imagination latent behind the natural world.

[Source] onsu-gonggan homepage