Contents of the Exhibition
*Difference made by Noh JungHa and woman*
Noh JungHa seeks to understand herself through taking pictures. That is about fate of being a woman, or rather a human endowed, like the artist herself said, with ‘curse and blessing’ at the same time. As being relatively oppressed and discriminated, women see world in a way no man can see. The same goes for that the proletariat can see a conflict in this world but the bourgeoisie can not. But expressing oneself as a woman needs special methods. If we must say, filming a documentary about you doesn’t necessarily show who you are.
You can not claim to have related with yourself until you are engaged in the politics of image that makes women woman-like. In a certain society there exist a particular system of image that represents women. Works by Noh JungHa seems like an expression of a certain attitude on that system. A woman is born, made and dismembered after that system. In a sense, a woman might be dismembered on such a moment as she is born after a given system of image. Most of women make up and dress up themselves on the basis of a specific, up-to-dated criterion of being beautiful. Thus the moment when a specious self is born, what in fact created is not a real self, but an accessory belongs to an order of a symbol woman. Still there is no one considering oneself an accessory of a symbolic order. Everyone lives in system and systemized, but an individual is not a system him/herself.
There is punctum in a system as much as it is in a photograph. Through that hole an existence shines out. In a photograph by Noh JungHa, her dressed-up image looked darkly through a glass seems hesitating whether or not enter into the system. The system of course wants to catch her, but she hesitates always. In a photograph she, bleeding menstral blood, deeply deliberates on pregnancy and giving-birth. The gaudy glittering gold foil on background makes that deliberation more disturbing. The splendor of gold foil seems be an allegory of material value that seduces women. Woman might be a being oscillating between seduction and pain.
It is easy to say when it is about someone else, but not so at all when it’s about yourself. Relating about oneself by means of photographs needs courage as well as a peculiar method. What sets off in the photographs by Noh JungHa is the attitude the artist takes, as she grope for her own photographic grammar. By taking pictures of oneself or a model, set up a certain situation or put a make-up, Noh JungHa seeks to find an answer to a question, in what way we could show ourselves with photographs. That answer may be found not in a certain way, but in splits, or differences among a number of ways.
Young-Jun Lee ·Image Critic |
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