Masan Contemporary Art Museum, Korea

Dec 7 - 31, 2023

Culture and art are deeply intertwined with identity. Culture may also be understood as the totality of practices, values, memories, and sensibilities that distinguish one community from another.

Every time and every place exist in relation to individuals, and individuals in turn exist within a network of relationships. Within a given place, individual beings come together to form a collective, generating an ongoing process of dialectical exchange and transformation. It is therefore natural that the appearance and expression of each individual should be as diverse as the number of individuals themselves.

When only what has become familiar or habitual is accepted as worthy, while everything outside that familiarity is continually rejected, excluded, or treated with suspicion, diversity loses the space in which it can emerge. Cultural circulation is likewise obstructed. What follows naturally is stagnation.

“Forgotten Habits” brings together Korean artists living and working in France, French artists, and Korean artists whose practices have been shaped through their connections with France. Crossing geographical, cultural, and artistic borders, these artists have built their reputations through sustained engagement with different cultural environments. In developing their own creative aesthetics, they have had to resist the temptation to become confined within established conventions, while continuing to work with determination amid constant competition and uncertainty.

Their practices, in many ways, allow us to perceive the seeds of the Korea we know today—and, perhaps, the emergence and global expansion of what is now called K-culture.

These are artists who have constructed their own worlds and cultures through both body and mind. They are, in a profound sense, warriors who have endured and survived: individuals who, without being asked, chose to place a heavy burden upon their own shoulders and continued to carry it forward.

Their journeys remind us that cultural identity is never fixed. It is formed through movement, encounter, conflict, adaptation, memory, and renewal. It is precisely through crossing boundaries—rather than closing them—that culture remains alive.

Hyo Sun HA

Artistic Director

Works