The Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT) is Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art’s (QAGOMA) flagship international contemporary art event, and the only major exhibition series in the world to focus exclusively on the contemporary art of Asia, the Pacific, and Australia.The 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT8), which opened on 21 November and continues until 10 April 2016, showcases the work of more than 80 established and emerging artists and groups from more than 30 countries across the two gallery spaces of the QAGOMA complex.This edition of APT emphasizes the role of performance in recent art and explores the use of the human form to express cultural, social, and political ideas as well as what QAGOMA describes as “the role of artists in articulating experiences specific to their localities.”Throughout the duration of APT8, BLOUIN ARTINFO will feature a series of interviews with participating artists. In the interview below, Korean artist Choi Jeong Hwa discusses his APT8 installations “Cosmos” 2015 and “The Mandala of Flowers” 2015 (more info here).“The Mandala of Flowers” 2015, created for QAGOMA's Children's Art Centre, invites children to create their own mandalas from colourful plastic bottle lids. Suspended above the mandala project is the beaded strands of his “The Cosmos” 2015.Could you describe the work that you will be presenting at the 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT8) and the motivation and inspiration behind its creation? I think art is all about humbling myself in order to lift others.The holiness of the trivial things, the extraordinariness of mediocrity, the usefulness of useless things… These are recurring subjects of my work.I get inspiration from dynamic markets, narrow allies, dazzling dumping grounds, vibrant construction sites in the city as I stroll through them.The result is the large-scale installation “Cosmos,” installed with the playground “Mandala.”And the installation “Alchemy” breathes life to the dead space as a permanent collection.How does the work you are presenting at APT8 connect with your ongoing practice and the interests and preoccupations that form the basis of your work? Which one is disposable between the natural flower and the artificial flower?Beauty and ugliness are not different?Is the coexistence and the harmony of decomposition and freshness possible?You are a flower. Everything is a flower.Your Heart is My Art?…These are the questions in my mind. Art cannot be the answer. It is forever a question.What is the significance of the work you are presenting at APT8 in terms of what it represents, conveys, and expresses?ALCHEMYAs if a drop of normal water becomes “sweet water” with the devoted care and what other people discarded becomes treasure to me, I think the role of art is to find meanings to all meaningless things in the world.I’d like people to think that we must always treasure humble things and things that are close to us.MANDALAThere’s a beauty in perceiving beautiful things as beautiful, but the beauty of provoking a question “what is beauty?” is also a beauty.All things and people influence each other and are necessary “inter-becoming” making up the counterpart.All beings are the mirrors of each other and the images reflected in them.Public art (the playground) begins with encounter. Conversation and communication start.COSMOSSmall things, trivial things, vague things, weak things, slick things, mysterious things, hidden things, non-existent things shine, reflect each other and emerge. Isn’t disappearing everyday life and cosmos?I wanted to show the uncountable infinity with the countable infinity—the Micro Cosmos and the Macro Cosmos! The entire ocean can go inside one drop of water. Meaning one can observe the universe from a grain of dust and a drop of water!“There’s nothing invisible through loving eyes”How would you define and describe the position and status of your practice within the context of the wider Asia Pacific art scene?Odds and ends, odds and sods, odd talks, odd thoughts, odd mixture –these are all abandoned things in the world. I’m talking about the importance of all sorts of odds and ends.Isn’t art remembering the forgotten and the love for life?What do you want to convey and/or express with the work you are presenting at APT8?As you and I dream happiness, we all have the ability to be, the rights to be, and the responsibility to be happy.Everything is Art, Everyone is an Artist.
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