2020.2.27.~ 8.30.

Nam June Paik Art Center 2F

Yoonseo Kim (Curator, Nam June Paik Art Center)

Hyunjeung Kim (Curator, Nam June Paik Art Center)

Angelica Mesiti, Jaye Moon, Jesse Chun, Ji Hye Yeom, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Lawrence Lek, Juho Lee & Juseung Lee, Woojin Kim

The exhibition The Future of Silence: When your tongue vanishes examines language as spoken and written, as body and mind, as the corporeal and the conceptual, and as systems and cultures. The eight artists explore the phenomena of plunder and extinction of language in the neoliberal society, the relations in understandings and misunderstandings as well as the diversity of nonverbal communications happening outside of letters. At the same time, they reveal the hierarchy and alienation created by the dominant language and the power of language directly connected to human rights as a tool for survival. The exhibition evokes these issues that permeate our everyday life, and thereby sheds new light on the reality and diversity of language, invisible but present.

“Who am I and what will I be like?” Starting from the question of a tongue asking its own whereabouts, the exhibition ultimately seeks to recognize the existence that is different from oneself. Do our anxieties really come from other beings, other species and other languages? Would the anxieties be dispelled if we had only one tongue left in the future? We hope art will be able to bring some comfort to people in these difficult times.