APT11 Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art: QAGOMA
Grand Mother Island Project - Chapter 4: Seabird Habitats, 2022
Installation View, Roppongi Crossing, Mori Art Musuem, Tokyo 2022
Haji Oh
30 Nov 2024 - 27 Apr 2025
Haji Oh – GOMA Gallery 3.4
Art that takes you places.
Seventy artists, collectives and projects from more than 30 countries will feature in the eleventh chapter of the flagship Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) exhibition series, the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art.
Bringing compelling new art to Brisbane, the Triennial is a gateway to the rapidly evolving artistic expression of Australia, Asia and the Pacific. Alongside artists and makers whose work has not been previously seen in Australia are a raft of new co-curated projects investigating artforms and cultural contexts rarely encountered outside their home localities.
For the first time this Triennial includes creators from Saudi Arabia, Timor-Leste and Uzbekistan, while First Nations, minority and diaspora cultures hold a central place, as do the collective, performative and community-driven modes of artmaking that thrive in the region. Through nuanced approaches to storytelling, materials and technique the exhibition explores themes that resonate across these cultural landscapes, such as how we care for the natural and urban environments, protect and revive cultural heritage, and how histories of migration and labour shape experience today.
As always, the Triennial is conceived and shaped from the ground up by expert hands. Artists, curators, interlocutors, cultural allies and partners have meaningfully woven the region’s creative stories into an exhibition that will inspire, uplift and move you.
Haji Oh: Grand-Mother Island Project: Chapter 4
A third-generation member of Japan’s Zainichi Korean community and a recent migrant to Australia, Haji Oh uses the techniques and materials of weaving as a platform to explore experiences of dispossession, dispersion and migration, and the complexities of personal identity that ensue. Through weaving, dyeing, tying and stitching techniques, she draws on personal narratives and photographic archives in evocative installations that incorporate mapping, picturing and patterning.
Her textile installation Seabird Habitats 2022 is a single tableau of seven suspended woven panels that map the entanglement of Korean labour in the history of colonialism in the Asia Pacific region. Referencing her personal and family history, Oh proposes weaving as a space where these complexities can be mediated — where past and present can come together and new, less exploitative relationships can be formed.
This project is assisted by the Ishibashi Foundation and the National Center for Art Research, Japan.