WHEN:
May 17, 2025 - January 25, 2026
For more information visit the Peabody Essex Museum website.
WHERE:
Peabody Essex Museum
East India Square,
161 Essex Street,
Salem, MA 01970
A spokesperson describes the event as follows:
“...Jung Yeondoo: Building Dreams highlights two of the artist’s major photographic works: Evergreen Tower (2001) and Bewitched (2001-ongoing).
After attending art school in London, Jung returned to South Korea in the early 2000s and discovered that Seoul had become a “concrete forest” of high-rise apartment complexes. Among his new neighbors, Jung observed that the comforts of urban, middle-class life had also produced a sense of anonymity and isolation. Driven by curiosity, Jung began to ask the people around him about their hopes and aspirations.
The resulting work, Evergreen Tower, opens the doors into the living rooms of 32 families in the same apartment complex in Seoul’s Gwangjin-gu district. The apartments are architecturally nearly identical in size and layout, but each family chose their own attire and personal objects – such as toys or musical instruments – to include in their portrait. Jung’s photographs shed light on these individual families’ tastes and aspirations, revealing vibrant interior lives behind the concrete walls of the city and prompting us to reflect on our own lifestyles and choices. ...
...In Bewitched, Jung asked people whom he encountered on his travels around the world about their dreams. He created portraits of individuals as they were — a gas station attendant, an ice cream shop cashier, a working parent — and then worked collaboratively with them to create a second portrait that visually fulfilled their greatest wishes — to drive a racecar, explore the Arctic with a dogsled or be swept off to a movie set. Though the moments captured in the portraits are fleeting, these photographs act as catalysts for conversation as well as an opportunity for the participants to reflect on the heart’s unspoken desires..."
