Community Engagement Project
Public Art Project
17.10.2022-31.5.2023
Curated by Jisu Yoon

Curatorial Statement
Jisu Yoon, Curator

One of the most salient features of the Seoul Olympic Museum of Art is its location: The museum is nestled in Seoul Olympic Park. Its building is exquisitely in harmony with nature in this space. Since its entrance is connected to the park's trail, visitors are allowed to appreciate the beauty of nature all year round along with warks of art. The museum has curated a public art project for citizens to expand the park as a cultural communication space on the basis of this placeness. This denotes its endeavor to be the museum for the general public, not for a limited number of viewers. The subject of this project is 'rest. Our daily lives have been interrupted by COVID-19, and the patterns of our lives have undergone many changes. Open-air spaces such as mountains, seas, and parks amidst such changes have been only resting places, while activity in a park where physical distancing is possible has been rising gradually. The museum intends to arrange a 'space of rest' for citizens who flock together at the park to relax for a while from their tedious, draining routines.

The museum has selected places to incarnate a space for rest and chose 'Water Yard', "Sculpture Forest', and 'Great Grassland" as target sites. Water Yard' in clasest proximity to the museum is a place where the inside (artwork) best interacts with the outside (nature) and is highly accessible to visitors. "Great Grassland* is a rest area citizens often visit for its exotic scenery of the lawn stretching without border to the inside of the park. "Sculpture Forest" is not only an art space where prominent sculptures from around the world are on display but also a resting area for citizens. The museum is circumspect in selecting a place, putting emphasis on communication between art and the public, and taking its accessibility to the museum, symbolism, and historicity into account.

The museum interprets the target sites' features and invites artists to collaborate with citizens. It also tries to infuse vitality into the spaces based on each artist's creativity, and provide citizens with an opportunity to enjoy art and culture in their everyday lives thraugh course-centered workshops. Six artists have been invited on the basis of their collaboration potentiality with citizens, capacity to interpret spaces, creativity and participation in public art projects, and organized three teams in which one team consists of artists involved in more than two genres in order to develop novel content. Lastly, the museum, in collaboration with the Songpa-gu district office, has recruited citizen participants to expand a community in the region. This project lays stress on communication between citizens and artists. It tries to arouse citizens interest and engagement by facusing more on the process than the result. and give variety to both medium and facture.

The Bench for My Stayby Hidden Camp (Eom Arong, Woo Sung-chul) is a reflection of one's reminiscence about play. Hidden Camp produces their works through a workshop that is a combination of art experiences with citizens of all ages, from grandmothers to grandsons, and play. The participants create a hammock made of different colored thread after acquiring a simple skill and then present a space for resting by suspending it between benches. The Bench for My Stay leads citizens to make a variety of motions and actions while turning the park into a play space by allowing them to use it freely.

Sky Canvas by Sky Harmony (Song Eun-ju, Jang Se-young, Hwang Cha-young) captures a diversity of citizens viewpoints towards the idea of 'rest." The artists working in the fields of painting, video, and design produce benches and sculptures to set in the Water Yard" in collaboration with a woodwork club from Songpa Village Art Factory.

Each three-dimensional artwork brings comfort and relaxation to the audience as it holds a beautiful sky and landscape changing with time and weather. This sculptural piece also provides content pertaining to music, artwork, and the museum's exhibit information with an attached QR code.

My Neighbor's Bench by Holiday (Jung Ji-hyun, Moon Boram) is an art bench made using new mediums such as VR technology and 3D printing. This team invalved mainly in sculpture, installation, and performance places emphasis on how to address and perceive materials' physical properties. The artists open new possibilities of public art through their creative ideas vis-à-vis new subject matter and materials, leading participants to novel, unique artistic experiences by using new technologies. They make a creative bench with the idea they have from an imaginary bench made by citizens, discovering a new story from citizens and communicating directly with them.

The SOMA Public Art Project could give a glimpse of community art's sustainability by virtue of the active cooperation of citizens, art clubs, and the local government, even, though there was a lot of trial and error in its preparation.

Citizens can discover the inner potential of art in a series of processes such as the discovery of ideas, the exchange of views, and production of work while artists could disclose art's social value effectively through their reinterpretation of the space of Olympic Park and creative works and practices.

Olympic Pak filled with works of public art will play its role not just as a physical space but as a space for communication with the general public, it is our expectation that. citizens will gain recuperation in a haven with benches co-made by artists and citizens in the city through rest and art.