Korean artist Jazoo Yang is interested in the evolution of cities and the nostalgic poetry that emerges from popular neighborhoods rapidly demolishing in areas of urban redevelopment. Her two murals for Nuart Festival 2018 uses Korean symbols of forced evictions and demolition to raise awareness about all those globally who are exposed to the threat of forced migration.
About the Murals
Yang painted both a mural in Stavanger East, as well as on a dilapidated boat. Her first titled, ‘1881-1’, refers to the address of a demolished house in Busan in Yang´s native South Korea, which was cleared as part of the city´s sweeping gentrification program. In Busan, there are over 100 redevelopment districts eating away at the city’s landscape day-by-day. The mural holds particular significance in Stavanger East; vast swathes of which have been transformed from a post-industrial ruin into a thriving residential and ´start-up´ district over the last 10 years. Each symbol (either a circle, cross or dot) carries a specific meaning: deserted house, demolishment or illegal occupation – indicating whether or not the building is clear and ready for demolition or not. In Stavanger, as in Busan, they´ve been uniformly sprayed in highly saturated, garish red.
While in Stavanger Yang also created a new iteration of her Dots series in which she typically covers a home set for demolition with thumbprints. In Korea, the thumbprint – or “Jijang” – has a legal and personally binding power similar to a signature. With just a thumbprint, whole communities are turned over to destruction; people driven to bankruptcy; and just as easily, millions of dollars exchanged. Yang explains: “Alleys, houses, trees, communities and everything that took a long time to embellish are gone in an instant without a trace. The act of imprinting each red Jijang is a promise to remember all of this and a temporal and spatial record.”
The artist also marked a dilapidated, landlocked boat with thumbprints, alluding to the evisceration of traditional seafaring industries in Stavanger such as shipping and fishing in favour of the lucrative oil industry, as well as the global migrant crisis and widespread apathy towards the humanitarian crisis arising from forced migration on a mass scale.
Despite the sophistication and depth which her artwork depicts, there’s also an element of primitive art. An interesting fusion the artist uses to examine the connection we have with our own history and the continuing evolution of the places we live.
About the Artist
Jazoo Yang is a Korean mixed media artist whose work often distorts public spaces to profound ends. With a mixture of concept-focused art and an interesting visual style, Yang’s work questions the relationship between ourselves and the spaces we inhabit.
About Nuart Festival
Nuart is an international contemporary street and urban art festival, held annually in Stavanger, Norway since 2001. From the first week of September an invited international team of street artists leave their mark on the city’s walls, both indoor and out, creating one of Europe’s most dynamic and constantly evolving public art events.
It provides an annual platform for national and international artists who operate outside of the traditional art establishment. It is widely considered the world’s leading celebration of Street Art among its peers.
The event aims to stimulate debate by challenging entrenched notions of what art is, and more importantly, what it can be. Nuart aims to provide an internationally relevant, challenging and dynamic environment for artists, students, gallery goers and public alike; an event that aims to reflect the culture as well as participate it helping define it.
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