16.12.2022
Humboldt Forum
From 18. December 2022 Mirae kate-hers RHEE presents the augmented reality game Sammel Sucht/Collecting Crave: Here she experiments with a new artistic format and invites visitors of the museum exhibitions of the Humboldt Forum to a playful conversation. Participants are also given the opportunity to help shape the development of the game. The game offers the possibility to assemble artifacts and collection objects from Western museums in the form of multimedia AR components to create their own collection.
The artist Mirae kate-hers RHEE is currently a fellow at the Museum für Asiatische Kunst and Ethnologisches Museum, Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, where she is preparing a solo project for 2024. In her continual participatory sculptural installations, she questions the role of Western museums as guardians of postcolonial values. Taking the so-called Wunderkammern as a starting point, the artist reflects on transnational collecting practices, exhibition, and object histories, exploring concrete examples from the museum during the time of her residency. For this purpose, she also seeks to engage with the public in the form of analog and digital platforms such as performative lectures, exhibitions, and workshops.
The basis of the game is a large-format photo showing a shelf made by the artist herself. It is a replica based on a painting by the famous Korean court painter Yi Ŭngnok (ca. 1860). Yi Ŭngnok's painting exemplifies Munbangdo painting (scholar's study painting), a unique genre of still life that emerged in Korea in the late 18th century. Munbangdo screens depict Duobaoge (treasure boxes), Chinese collector's cabinets with asymmetrical shelves that were coveted in Korea. Books are the main motif of Munbangdo painting, depicting objects closely related to the aspirations of scholars: a figurative representation, as it were, and an abstract portrait of a person.
The game Sammel-Sucht/Collecting Crave conceived by the artist transcends the concept of the Wunderkammer, (the repository for precious objects familiar to the European context), across space and time and recalls the Korean version of Wunderkammer (Munbangdo), which reflects the transcultural exchange with Chinese collecting culture. The work encourages new and critical ways of looking at mediation formats in the museum, especially the way artworks and cultural artifacts are framed, that are not easily presented in the European context. Sammel-Sucht/Collecting Crave encourages participants to formulate their own critical positions in relation to current debates about art in a global context, imperialism, and postcolonialism.
Participants can photograph their collections and share them on social media using #collectingcrave and #sammelsucht
Mirae kate-hers RHEE (이미래/李未來) works and lives between the United States, South Korea, and Germany as a consequence of her transracial experiences. Learning new languages, having to code-switch, and cultural traditions and practices influence her artistic work. From a futuristic feminist perspective, she creates complex research-based Gesamtkunstwerke (Total-Works-of-Art) that tell autoethnographic stories. RHEE received her MFA in Studio Art from the University of California-Irvine, where she was a Graduate Studies Diversity scholar and Jacob K. Javits Fellow. In 2009, she established her studio in Berlin.
The presentation can be found in ROOM 304 as part of the permanent exhibition Ethnologische Sammlungen und Asiatische Kunst at the Humboldt Forum.
Funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.