Wednesday, February 2, 2011

LAST WORDS on contemporary art in an age of cultural diversity and globalisation


Published by Sydney's 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, LAST WORDS is the culmination of a year-long project of exhibitions, artists' projects and performances that set out to tackle some of the issues of language, communication, memory and history in an age of cultural diversity and globalisation.

In the introduction to the publication 4A director Aaron Seeto writes:" The artists in this project illustrate that it is no longer straightforward to answer questions such as who are you, where are you from, how do you fit in? It seems we have entered a period where traditional forms of identification are neither consistent or certain, particularly as our ideas about place and location are increasingly defined by the intersection of local, national and global references - colliding histories, traditions and politics are what define our contemporary experiences."

Jae Hoon Lee was one of the artists represented in the year-long project with NOMAD, an exhibition of large-scale photographs and videos from his travels through India, Nepal and Korea. While on the road, Lee collected images that were subsequently digitally stitched together to create fictional landscapes and a visually compelling interplay of real and virtual experiences. 

Seeto has written on Lee's work in LAST WORDS in a piece titled Intimate Camera. You can order a copy of the publication here.
Image: Jae Hoon Lee, Becoming (Self Portrait), 2002, digitally collaged photograph, 100 66 cm