Jesse Chun: SULLAE 술래

Diana Seo Hyung Lee

Jesse Chun interrogates systems of power, which necessitates an interrogation of language. English, the “common” or “universal” tongue, is often at the forefront of Chun’s practice.

Chun’s new video SULLAE 술래 (2020), on view virtually through the Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto, part of Shift Key, guest curated by Daisy Desrosiers, and a large-scale three channel installation part of Jesse Chun: SULLAE 술래 at the Yeh Art Gallery at St. John’s University, takes her interrogation its furthest point thus far—an undoing of language the artist calls unlanguaging. It is not aimed specifically at English, but positioned against meaning, patriarchy, production, and the colonial agenda.

Jesse Chun, SULLAE 술래, 2020. 3-channel video, 6 minutes 25 seconds, voiced and voiceless consonant of the English language, hangeul (한글), and English text, images, index pages from intonation books, white noise, word censor bleep, dimensions variable.

Sullae (술래) is a reference to the traditional Korean song and dance, gang gang sullae (강강술래), performed by women during a full moon to bid for good harvest. While holding hands and singing in a circle, one singer leads the women in song, the women responding with the refrain gang gang sullae. Though seemingly joyous, the women participating would not have been able to, in their everyday lives, sing, speak loudly, nor leave the house at night, in the patriarchal society of ancient Korea. This dance was a license for their one release...READ MORE