Sarah Oh-Mock and Bongjun Oh are an artist couple who have repeatedly collaborated on artistic projects over the past ten years. The exhibition “beyond tongues” presents these collaborative works in the form of an archive through which visitors can move. This immersive installation includes objects, photographs, and video works arranged in chronological order and shaped by influences from a variety of places. These influences are reflected in the works and are assigned to the individual spaces of the Saalbau.
Since the beginning of their collaboration, Oh-Mock and Oh have explored their different cultural backgrounds, merging them in their artistic practice. From this, they create a fictional, future-oriented transcultural aesthetic that envisions a world where nationality no longer plays a role – a meta-culture in which old and new, East and West, organic, inorganic, and digital materials coexist equally and form new connections.
As the two artists speak different native languages, they do not view spoken language as a medium for complete understanding – a theme they explore in the work Le fin (2018). Art, by contrast, serves as a universal language that enables deeper understanding beyond the limits of verbal communication.
Curatorial assistance: Diana Nowak and Tatjana Rotfuß
