Kunsthal Charlottenborg

This summer, Kunsthal Charlottenborg dedicates its entire south wing to a solo exhibition featuring Jane Jin Kaisen (born 1980). Central to the exhibition, which is the most comprehensive presentation of the Korean-born Danish artist to date, is her aweinspiring cinematic installation Community of Parting. The work takes its starting point in the myth of the female shaman Bari, who, despite being abandoned and cast out, refuses to submit to the boundaries of mankind and becomes a mediator between the living and the dead.

From this work – with its recurring shamanistic rituals and evocative visual montages – connections are made to a selection of Jane Jin Kaisen’s works from the past ten years, in which the artist explores topics such as memory, border demarcation, trauma, resistance and reconciliation in the field where individual experiences and collective stories intersect. The exhibition presents several new works, including a number of sculptural works incorporating objects that the artist collected on travels in North and South Korea

The artist addresses Korea’s turbulent history, including the Division of Korea, the Korean War and the Jeju Massacre. Likewise, the exhibition calls forth several migration stories and marginalised narratives where collective and personal experiences converge. The exhibition forms a cyclic totality where the transitions between individual works are blurred as they complement each other

Jane Jin Kaisen works with video installation, film, photographic installations, performance and text and she has exhibited and screened her films all over the world. In this exhibition, she brings past and present into play in multivoiced, feminist works that evoke and document neglected historical matters and personal experiences, thereby outlining the contours of new, possible communities.