On June 5 the new exhibition Healing Powers was unveiled at the Tropenmuseum Amsterdam, a very special date as museums reopened all across the Netherlands. I’m honoured to participate in this exhibition with several works, including 4 photographs from On Distant Objects and Hungry Gods. These portraits provide an intimate view of Korean shamans and the vital role these women still play in today’s Korea.

The exhibition also features my work ‘Untitled #11 (Mediator)’, a large lunar shamanic cloth made with aerospace materials and a technique I learnt from Korean shaman Jo Seong-Yeon while living in Seoul. With these works at the Tropenmuseum I reflect on the role that shamanism could play in challenging the processes of exploitation and alienation that currently characterise humanity’s relationship with the universe.

Healing Powers presents healing and animistic traditions across the world. It includes spiritually charged objects in combination with several works from artists including Marina Abramovic, Joseph Beuys, Remy Jungerman, Simon Tookoome and Edouard Duval Carrié. The underlying principle for both perspectives is the same: the belief that there is more than we can explain with our (Western) science, that we live in a world inhabited by a diversity of beings —whether human, non human, material or spiritual.

Healing Powers is on display until June 6, 2022.
Tropenmuseum
Linnaeusstraat 2
1092 CK Amsterdam