Won Ju

Hearkening Hearkening

Ye witches who live in lamps 

Ye powers of watts and amps

Wizards of AC/DC transmission

Send me an electrician

-Aunt Clara

Hearkening Hearkening is about doorknobs, thresholds, spells gone awry, and the moment when the old dialectic of outsides and insides becomes a mise-en-abyme.

Witches, as they appear in the television sitcom Bewitched (1964-1972), are figures perfectly at home in continuous space. Doors present no obstacle to them. With an effortless snap of the fingers or a twitch of the nose they can pierce the rigid boundaries of private life, a wanton transgression of the spatial economy of mid-century suburbia. The show’s protagonist, Samantha, must suppress her magical powers to suit the wishes of her continually alarmed husband, Darren. This is a problem, although it pales next to that of her Aunt Clara, whose powers are on the wane. Unable to clear the hurdle of the door in her old age and encroaching senility, Aunt Clara becomes a fetishistic collector of doorknobs.

Bio 

Won Ju Lim (born in Gwangju South Korea,1968) is a multimedia artist based in Los Angeles. Her practice examines the complex interactions of real and imaginary space as they produce fantasy, memory, and longing. Evident in her practice is the interest of the peripheral as it questions ideas relating to the dislocation and self-alienation of a subject, and addresses the dialectics of inside and outside.

Lim’s work has been exhibited widely in United States and internationally, including San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose; Yerba Buena Art Center, San Francisco; St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis; Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Art, Seoul; Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; DA2 Domus Artium, Salamanca; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus; ZKM  Museum fur Neue Kunst, Karlsruhe; Wilhelm-Hack-Museum, Ludwigshafen; Museum Haus Ester, Krefeld; Museum der Moderne, Salzurg; Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami; Casino Luxemboug - Forum d'Art Contemporain, Luxembourg; Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Siegen; and Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin. 

Her biennale exhibitions include International Incheon Women Artists’ Biennale, Incheon; Architecture, Art and Landscape Biennial of the Canaries, Fuerteventura; Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju; Snapshot: New Art from Los Angeles, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and Muenster Sculpture Biennale, Muenster. 

She is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships including the 2016 C.O.L.A. Individual Artist Fellowship; Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Fellowship; Creative Capacity Fund; Tribeca Film Institute Media Arts Fellowship (funded by the Rockefeller Foundation); Korea Arts Foundation for Visual Arts Grant; and California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists.