Among the Unburied

For immediate release:
Feb. 16, 2016

AMONG THE UNBURIED SHOWCASES THE WORK OF MAURICIO ARANGO, MARIANNE NICOLSON, AND PARK CHAN-KYONG AT HAVERFORD COLLEGE

HAVERFORD, Pa.—— In Colombia, almost a quarter of a million people, mostly civilians, have died, and tens of thousands more have disappeared during five decades of internal conflict. In Canada, a colonial legacy of more than a century of residential schools, designed to wipe out the languages and cultures of aboriginal peoples, hangs over the country. And in Korea, a turbulent 20th century, including a Japanese occupation and a violent civil war that split the country in two, incited rapid modernization that left many behind. Though these three countries may seem worlds apart, all are grappling with ghosts. A new Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery exhibit, Among the Unburied, tunes into the voices of the departed through the works of three artist-storytellers: Mauricio Arango, Marianne Nicolson, and Park Chan-kyong.

A burial signals a closure and marks the end of life; lacking such closure, the unburied remain ungrieved or ungrievable. This new exhibit, curated by Associate Curator of Carnegie International 2018 Liz Park, honors those who have been unattended to, even in death. Arango, Nicolson, and Park invite visitors to consider a world of ghosts as firmly planted in the complex geopolitics and cultural schisms of their homelands. The subjects of these artists’ work—a harvester of corpses in the hour of the moon, spirits evoked by light, a shamanic ritual—while seemingly fantastic, stem from the very real conditions of trauma and violence that underlie their national histories.

In the Gallery, two short films, Nightfishing by Park, produced in collaboration with his filmmaker brother Park Chan-wook, and The Night of the Moon Has Many Hours by Arango, will be on display, projected on opposite walls at alternating times throughout the day. A separate room will premiere a site-specific light installation by Nicolson.

The exhibit will run at Haverford College’s Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery from March 18 through April 29. The show's opening will be celebrated on March 18 by a gallery talk with the curator at 4:30 p.m. and a reception at 5:30 p.m. The exhibit is further enhanced by the Strange Truth film series, which includes a screening of Park Chan-kyong's Manshin: Ten Thousand Spirits on April 6 at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute. For more information on this series: hav.to/strangetruth16. Additional information on the exhibit can be found at exhibits.haverford.edu/amongtheunburied.

Among the Unburied is supported by the John B. Hurford ’60 Center for the Arts and Humanities and the Tuttle Creative Residencies Program. The exhibition is organized in conjunction with the Hurford Center for the Arts and Humanities 2015-16 faculty seminar “Attending to the Dead,” led by Hank Glassman, associate professor and co-chair in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures.

Part of the John B. Hurford ’60 Center for the Arts and Humanities and located in Whitehead Campus Center, the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery is open Monday through Friday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. (8 p.m. Wednesday), Saturdays and Sundays 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, contact Matthew Seamus Callinan, associate director of the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery and campus exhibitions, at (610) 896-1287 or mcallina@haverford.edu.

Haverford College is located at 370 Lancaster Avenue, Haverford, PA, 19041