Program
Won Jy (b. 1990 in South Korea, based in Nîmes, France) has been invited by Teatergalleriet to participate in the gallery’s first international residency. Jy will work in a studio at Ateljéhuset Pukeberg and on site-specific projects in Kalmar during May and June. He will conclude the residency with the solo exhibition “About Warding” at Teatergalleriet in Kalmar.
Won Jy works primarily with ready-mades—such as discarded objects that others view as trash or nuisances—and installations. He returns to questions of how strangers are welcomed or dismissed in a given territory, and he has explored and utilized, among other things, pigeon phobia as a metaphor for how places and architecture can be welcoming or exclusionary, often based on entirely arbitrary decisions. Jy’s work is imbued with subtle humor, and he combines complex, serious issues with lighthearted and poetic forms.
During his residency in Kalmar, Jy will investigate the multifaceted narratives of exclusion that have shaped the city’s urban structure from the 17th to the 19th century. At the center of this investigation is Kalmar Prison—a place where the spatial logic of punishment and the spatial logic of care converge, both enforcing exclusion through the same gesture: pushing beyond the wall.
The artist residency is made possible by a collaborative grant from IASPIS, the Swedish Arts Council’s international program for visual arts and design.
The Glass Factory in Boda is sponsoring Won Jys’s work in glass during the residency.
