MMCA Hyundai Motor Series is an annual exhibition project that the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art conducts in partnership with the Hyundai Motor Company to support leading Korean artists. The artist selected for this year's iteration of the exhibition is the film director IM Heung-soon (b. 1969), who won the Silver Lion Awards at 56th Venice Biennale in 2015.
IM Heung-soon's "Things that Do Us Part" is proposed as an open project that invites on-site participation from the spectators to reflect on each individual's life and history by anchoring on the key words such as faith, fear, belief, betrayal, love, hatred, and haunting that emerge in contemporary Korean history. IM transforms the exhibition space into film sets, which are categorized by specific periods in contemporary Korean history. IM will create scenarios of each period along with the interviewees participating in the project, and the process will be filmed and presented at the exhibition. Visitors can not only watch the process during the exhibition period, but also participate in it as performers. The exhibition space that is set in the form of a film set is both a space representing contemporary Korean history and one that is filled with the stories of people across time and space. The final product of this project will be produced and presented as a film, which will not only be shown at the museum, but also in theatres to meet with more audiences. Through this project, IM seeks to reflect on the role of art, find different possibilities of vibrant art, and pose questions about the Korean society and individuals’ roles and lives as its members.
