Juxtapoz Art and Culture-Spring_2019

56 SPRING 2019

ON THE OUTSIDE

Jazoo Yang

Redevelopment Redefined

Jazoo Yang is probably best known for the

Dots series, where she covers a home set for

demolition with her thumbprint. In her homeland

of Korea, the thumbprint—or “Jijang”—has a

legal and personally binding power similar

to a signature. With just a thumbprint, whole

communities are turned over to destruction

and gentrification.

Upon moving to Berlin, Yang expanded her

Dots series to incorporate the issue of refugees

and migrants in Europe and beyond to explore

the evolution of cities. Working with local

immigrants, Yang discusses their stories, histories

and day-to-day existence as they mark the wall

together in a kind of folk song. In other series, she

scrapes, gathers and re-assembles remnants of

flaking paint, old wallpaper, rusted metal and the

flotsam and jetsam of demolished and vacated

sites, reconstituting them in the studio in acts of

remembrance; time and memory sealed in resin.

We spent time together discussing art, politics,

memory, loss and her place as one of the few

female “urban interventionists” currently

practicing on the streets of Europe.

Martyn Reed: Originally from South Korea

and now working out of Berlin, what have you

brought from that background to your current

projects on the streets of Europe?

Jazoo Yang: I was a designer and founding

member of Korea's first web magazine Akzine,

which covers the Korean independent scene and

underground. After that, I spent time making

documentary films.

My former house in Seoul was so narrow and

small, and one day, I just wanted to paint, so

I decided to go out, paint on the streets and make

installations using abandoned objects. I met

other artists, and in 2012, we created a project

team called Seoul Urban Art Project. It was a

contemporary urban art movement made up of

street and graffiti artists, painters, illustrators,

filmmakers and photographers. I had also met

Brad Downey, The Wa, Akim, and Backjumps'

Adrian Nabi, who have been living in Berlin. At

the time, their work seemed very fresh to me and

I enjoyed working with them. Those relationships

led to my decision to move to Berlin.

A city and its architecture obviously play

important roles in your work. There’s a tentative

relationship to muralism and street art, but

conceptually, you’re much closer to what we’d

call urban interventionism, which nurtures a

viewer’s awareness of their surroundings. Is this

something you research and play with?

The city was just a huge canvas to me at first.

However, the experience of working on the street

is quite different from the work done alone in the

studio. I naturally come in contact with people

and hear many stories about the site where I work,

Above: Redevelopment area, South Korea, 2016, Photo by Youngmoon Ha