Using unpublished material (videos, texts and photographs) created in dialogue with the Korean artist Chang-Kyong Park, Natacha Nisic questions the gaze directed at ‘the others’ in her two-part video work Princess Snow-Flower. She poses the question of certain ‘figures of Orientalism’ who, through their exotic moment, often hide a much more ruthless historical reality.
During a three-month stay in South Korea, Natacha Nisic collects documentary film material on shamanic practices. The artist meets a shaman who watches over a sacred place at a spring on an island 50 km from Seoul. On the occasion of a visit by a young woman seeking advice, the shaman talks about the adversities of her vocation, about the difficulty of finding a place between tradition, spirituality and charlatanism, but also about the hardships of daily life.
By confronting different perspectives on geographical or spiritual territories, Natacha Nisic presents a fragmented view of contemporary Korea. The legacy of different eras lies close together, from the tradition of shamanism to the late aftermath of the Cold War.
Princess Snowflower, video installation 2 HD video projections, color, sound, 19′, Galerie Florent Tosin, Berlin, 2012
Princess Snowflower, video installation 2 HD video projections, color, sound, 19′, Galerie Florent Tosin, Berlin, 2012
