Hyun-taek Cho
Vacant Room
Feb 6 - Mar 1, 2025
Vacant Room (2014-2018) is a series of about one hundred photographs I took of abandoned houses. I captured both the interior and the view outside of the vacant houses in a single plane by using the principle of camera obscura—a technique in which the outside landscape is projected on the opposite wall in an inverted image by drilling a small hole on one wall of a dark room. I had two motives in my mind for this work. The first is the dramatic change happening in Naju, the city where I was born and raised, and the second is a personal one related to the death of my family member.
A few years ago, there was a project in Naju to restore the ancient city fortresses as part of the “urban renewal” plan. As a result, most residents living near the fortress had to leave their home village. The houses stood deserted for some time before they were torn down, one after another. Houses in the alleys I had passed during my commute to school as a child all became deserted. Entering the yard, I found stuff the past residents couldn’t take with them scattered all over the place. The look of the empty houses was unfamiliar as if they were denuded. I imagined the scene once upon a time when the laughter of the family and the frolicking children filled the house. So now, what could I do with photography in this place where people have already left, where only the traces of those who have left remain?
My grandmother passed away about ten years ago. She had raised me, and my grandmother and I shared a room together for a very long time. When I returned home from her funeral, a little white butterfly entered our room. The butterfly flew around here and there as if it was used to it. I saw it sit resting on the wall, which also happened to be in a butterfly pattern. It was a moment when the living and the dead overlapped as if one. It felt like my deceased grandmother had become a butterfly to come to visit me once more, and this experience made me want to fill the room with living light again. Turning the room into a camera obscura, reflecting the illusion of the outside into the room, the floating dust in the air glistening from the light—it seemed as if the butterfly was entering the room once again. Through the ghostly illusion of light, what I wanted was to overcome the stern objectivity of photography, the very medium that fossilizes the moment it is taken.
In-Person Artist Talk
Sat, Feb 8, 3:30 PM
Hyun-taek Cho (South Korean, b. 1982, he/him/his) is a photographer and artist whose work explores events occurring at the boundary between urban and rural areas, using the landscapes of disconnection and absence to tell the story of Korean society. He majored in photography at university and studied art history and philosophy in graduate school, reflecting deep thought and cultural context in his work based on these studies. He has participated in two Gwangju Biennales in 2012 and 2021 and also the 2024 Houston FotoFest Biennial exhibition. His works are part of the collections of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, the Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, the Jeonnam Provincial Museum of Art, and the Gwangju Museum of Art, among others.