This project has been realized as part of the residency program at Musee MAC VAL in Val-de-Marne, France.
For this project Kyungwoo Chun contacted students at a school near the museum for non-francophone students. They recently arrived in France with different cultural backgrounds.
Before the students attend regular classes, they receive intensive French lessons for one year.
The artist asked the students to form teams to carry each other as long as they could. During this time, the artist photographed the protagonists in a long time exposure What interests him in these portraits is the emotional resonance of the moment. To carry a person on his back and give each other both physically as well as mentally support, promotes the willingness to trust each other and to adjust to each other. The artist plays with the traditional portrait photography, the photos are poetically blurred by the long exposure time. The softness of the images reflects the emotional intensity that students experience in these situations of sharing. The language of the body takes the place of speech and shows the fragile balance of several bodies interacting around cultural and language barriers. Kyungwoo Chun is interested in the relationship of adolescents to their bodies, which appear disproportionately early in their experience.
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