11. City of women International festival of Contemporary Arts / Juhyun Choi, Aurélie Levaux, Sunyoung Choi

08 October 2005 > 14 October 2005

Juhyun Choi / Zgodbe pod krilom

Aurélie Levaux / Dekliška soba

Juhyun Choi & Sunyoung Choi / Mamina roka

Opening of exhibition and performance

A multimedia approach, the employment of various materials and comic-strip art are common to three young authoresses who will exhibit their works in two galleries at AKC Metelkova mesto. The joint exhibition venue will be dedicated to visual images presented on various backgrounds (wood, cardboard, plastic, fabric, gum, etc.).
Girl's Room by Belgian artist Aurélie Levaux, is composed of drawings, illustrations, pictures and comics. ''It's a story about a little girl who won't grow up and thus lives in a sweet pink world, a place of dreams and fantasy which simultaneously represents her view of love and human relationships.''
The entrance to the gallery venue leads under the installation Stories under the Skirtby the Korean-French authoress Juhyun Choi. ''I made a tunnel of wide-open female legs from nylons and balloons, filled with water and air. Nylons evoke a particular part of female body and symbolise fetishised lust. I drew genitals and toes on them. A smooth round balloon is a very sensual form. Its material is reminiscent of condoms or skin while the knot is like the nipple. From the exterior, we see a tunnel of weird, semi-human forms that look similar to buttocks or breasts. The balloons are brought together in some sort of deformed legs; there are plenty of them and they are interwoven. The spectator can enjoy this witty and playful view of 'falsified' femininity from the exterior. Inside the tunnel, however, the floor is embedded with the testimonies of women from various periods who had had abortions. The tunnel gets ever-more narrow, and towards its end the spectator has to walk on all fours. This is important because the installation is a narrative of humiliation and through crawling one gets a closer view of the testimonials on the floor.''
The exhibition will be opened with a theatrical performance entitled My Mother's Hand performed by Juhyun & Sunyoung Choi], accompanied by the violinist Jelena Ždrale. In the spirit of traditional Chinese shadow theatre they shall recreate the dream world of shadows of both objects and the dancer transmogrified through the glass of an overhead projector. At a certain moment instead of a puppet, a real human hand emerges which is not proportional to the dancer's shadow. ''The performance was inspired by a dream I had about finding my mother's hand on the floor. The story deals with the entire range of emotions: from surprise, sadness, compassion and parental love, to fear and guilt.''
Igor Prassel

Paper Cut-Out and Ornamental Art Workshops

Aurélie Levaux will lead a furniture decoration art workshop which shall take place each day between10 am and 2 pm from 10th to 13th October at the Kunilingus Gallery (AKC Metelkova mesto).
Juhyun Choi will lead a paper cut-out art workshop which shall take place each day between2 pm and 6 pm from 10th to 13th October at the Kunilingus Gallery (AKC Metelkova mesto).
The works produced at these workshops will be presentedon 14th October at 10 pm in the Kunilingus Gallery (AKC Metelkova mesto).
Born in 1978 in Gyeongju (South Korea), Juhyun Choi has lived and worked since 2001 in France where she is finishing her studies of fine arts at the École Supérieure de l'image in Poitiers. She applies her multimedia authorial approach in video arts, animation, illustration and, in particular, comic strips. In addition to the solo comics publication Le mois de Choi Juhyun et Otto T (Éd. Groinge), she has published her works in a series of French anthologies as well as the Slovene comic Stripburger.
Sunyoung Choi, also born in 1978 in Gyeongju (South Korea), has lived and worked in France since 2003. She is involved in graphic design, photography and producing comics. Born in 1980 in Liege,Belgium, Aurélie Levaux studied at a teacher's training college where she specialised in work with the handicapped. She has also passed the qualification exam for dressmaking, and took a degree in illustration at the Institut Supérieur de Beaux-Arts Saint-Luc in Liege. Next to publishing her comic strips, mainly in Liege-based Mycose Comix Factory - you can read one of her works in the latest issue of Stripburger - she paints her stories onto canvas and decorates furniture with the completed works. Hitherto she has had exhibitions in Belgium and Switzerland.