____________________________________________________________________ info
selected works / my notes
exhibitions - /a tall action is not a height
If human life is not the catalyst of movement, how does it harness movement? Thinking about risk, futility, sanctuary spaces, and if the human body could avoid becoming the most dominant force in its environment, this performance explored the origins of the construction of language through the textures of raw and found materials articulating its sensory entanglments with space, including the terrain drawn by light and shadow, field recordings, and the relation of the human body to forces of gravity.
/surfaces
These collected artworks deal with the topographical veneer of experience, bringing together a selection of experimental pieces that explore how a performance practice builds what the complete surface could be. In the material landscapes from Ahn’s performance artwork, Voy(age)ur (2014), alongside new sculptural objects, Tiles (2019), Ahn questions what it means to hold on to things that may already be left behind and the impact that is left on the physical plane. Making reference to the conflicting movements within the perennial acts of building and preservation that subsequently remove the past in order to make way for the future, the artworks present tensions between the fragility of material taken out of context and out of time. Addressing the passage of time that frames our common material spaces, these pieces address the metaphysical awareness of contemporary memory as a pseudo-archaeological moment where temporal, cultural, and historical understandings collide.
/mots de neige, histoires en sable
Inspired by the complex spontaneity of memory, this exhibition draws from an imagined archive of lived histories throughout time that are embodied in the meeting between material and space. Approaching the site of exhibition as a volume to sculpt with line, form, and color, Ahn evokes the construction and malleability of an experience of identity that is shaped and reshaped by subjective narratives. These narratives, expressed through dreams, myths, and anecdotes, construct the human story and ultimately forge a paradoxically visible, and yet changing, sense of history and memory embodied in our world.
/on the genealogy of forms
Responding to the ongoing transformations of the building and the changing seasonal conditions outside, this exhibition explores the body’s means of knowledge production through the fluctuating engtanglements between architecture, the natural world, and the body’s sensory translation of that exchange. Through the alteration of the building’s internal steam-based heating system, drawing in space with linear metal forms, and expanding notions of the landscape through the use of light and temperature, Ahn experiments with the practical systems and forms that humans have used to mitigate their relationship to the natural elements, evoking phenomenological ideas around the themes of loss, decay, and regeneration.