Exhibition view: Ieodo (Island Beyond the Sea), The National Museum of Contemporary Art Korea. Photo: CJY Art Studio

IEODO (ISLAND BEYOND THE SEA) 2022-2024

Ieodo (Island Beyond the Sea) is an exhibition of seven interrelated film works: Burial of This Order (2022), Offering (2023), Halmang (2023), Guardians (2024), Portal (2024), Core (2024), and Wreckage (2024). Centrally featured across these performative and imaginative works is the natural environment of Jeju Island and the role of myths and rituals in humans’ attempts at making sense of their place in the world.

Jeju Island is a space that has recurred in multiple works by the artist over the past two decades where she has portrayed the island’s distinct cosmology, shamanic culture, and haenyeo sea diving practice as an ethos of coexistence between humans and nature. At the same time, the works recall Jeju Island’s violent and traumatic history marked by colonization, Cold War division, and massacre.

Ieodo (Island Beyond the Sea) refers to the Jeju word and mythical term ieodo: an island beyond the sea and a liminal space that is neither human nor divine and that exists between the heart and the mind, connecting the sky and the sea. Ieodo is associated with the afterlife as a dwelling place for those shipwrecked, abandoned, or lost at sea. It also represents a road of hope and a refuge from oppression and the hardships of life. Expressed in songs by the Jeju haenyeo sea divers and sometimes referenced by shamans during rituals, ieodo is part of the island’s collective imaginary.

While some works foreground possibilities for conviviality and connectedness, others highlight the damage and disharmony caused by humans’ propensity for greed, divisiveness, and disregard for life. As a whole the works provide a multidimensional and layered portrayal of the natural environment of Jeju, the island’s spiritual culture, cosmology, political history, and social fabric. At the same time, they evoke fundamental themes that resonate beyond cultural and geographic boundaries in negotiating and mediating the relationship between humans and nature, life and death, youth rebellion and ancestral knowledge, historical marginalization, and the formation of divergent narratives.

Video documentation: Ieodo (Island Beyond the Sea) at MMCA – The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea