WE ENTER Zadie Xa’s installation from the rear of the central hanok (a traditional Korean home), which is covered in colourful fabrics that allude to the Korean tradition of jogakbo, a style of patchwork used to create domestic wrapping cloths.
On entering, we are met by two animal guides, based on the artist’s dogs, and the shamanic deity Princess Bari, here created as a textile artwork. Within shamanic and oral mythology, the figure of the Princess Bari is one that guides souls from the living world into the underworld after death. Here, she accompanies viewers through the installation.
As we circle the hanok to find its entrance, we encounter other textile artworks, tiger masks, and bird-shaped kites, as well as “house gods” on the roof of the hanok, believed to protect the home, while ensuring prosperity and good health. Red and orange lighting slowly transitions into purples and deep blues, reflecting the passing of time and the journey that we are making into night and a new conscious reality.
For Xa, the central hanok represents a conduit between past and present: a liminal space, where the living and their ancestors co-exist. It is a meditative space in which reflection on the exhibition’s themes is facilitated by audio that features spoken word and a soundscape. The sequence of paintings in the hanok repeats or deepens the journey that we have followed in arriving at its entrance — the journey into night — and reveals to us a vision of a peaceable realm in which human beings and animals interrelate harmoniously.
The reference to forgiveness in the installation’s title derives from Four Ways to Forgiveness, a collection of four short stories by Ursula K. Le Guin. In these, the author conveys a rigorous criticism of colonisation through the genres of speculative fiction, science fiction, parable, and folklore. For Xa, these are languages that have the potential to dismantle what one knows or understands of the human condition. The pursuit of forgiveness is critical to the artist’s own thinking as she examines how her diaspora experience, as a Canadian Korean, involves a disjunction from her cultural community, and the ways in which she then seeks reconciliation through acknowledging those who have gone before her.
In doing so, she also refers to the belief that, by one’s acknowledgement of those who have passed away, and paying of respects to familial ancestors, deities or spirits may then forgive past wrongdoings and bring good fortune on to the household.
Photo Andy KeateZadie Xa: House Gods, Animal Guides and Five Ways 2 Forgiveness
Xa was born in Vancouver, in Canada, and is now based in London. Her practice focuses on familial legacies, matrilineal societies, communication between species, approaches to world-building, and systems of power. She uses study of the supernatural, Korean folk religions, speculative fiction, and water and marine ecologies as metaphors for exploring the unknown, while also alluding to abstract notions of homeland.
Her practice is highly collaborative. She has developed continuing exchanges with dancers and musicians, while working closely, as here, with the artist Benito Mayor Vallejo. Together, they have staged live performance, moving images, installations, and painting. As here, Korean mythology often provides the narrative framework for Xa’s investigations of ideas of cultural conflation, systems of power, home, and belonging. While drawing on her own experiences, she seeks to use multiple narratives situated in a contemporary socio-political context to explore hybrid and diasporic identities.
It is fascinating to see how Xa has used her shamanic religious heritage and beliefs in creating this installation, and the ways in which she creates reflective and meditative space for her viewers. A reflection that this work prompts is imagining what an installation of this kind might look like if transposed into another faith — for example, based on a Sukkot booth or tabernacle, and tapping into the heritage of Judaism. The way in which Xa creates paths and spaces with her religious sources, while linking to contemporary dialogues, provides a marvellous example to any artist of another faith seeking to tap into the riches of that tradition.
Central to this installation is a vision of reconciliation, harmony, and unity across generations, between humanity and the natural world, and within the material and the spiritual. Though rooted in Korean heritage and religion, this is a vision that transcends its sources, fascinating as they are, to welcome all who come to reflect in this temporary immersive and meditative space.
“Zadie Xa: House Gods, Animal Guides and Five Ways 2 Forgiveness” is at the Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, London E1, until 30 April. Phone 020 7522 7888. www.whitechapelgallery.org