Grapes and Seeds

DEUTSCH

Grapes and Seeds
Rabea Edel & Dongwan Kook

Feb 23 - April 1, 2023 

Vernissage⎢Thurs. Feb 23, 18 - 21 hr
* Reading with Dongwan Kook, 19 hr

Reading with Rabea Edel⎢Sat. March. 25, 14 hr

einBuch.haus / Florastr. 61, 13187 Berlin 

 

"A portrait of an unborn being in the time before birth"
"The birth of a child and the birth of a mother"

The duo exhibition Grapes and Seeds by Rabea Edel (Berlin, DE) and Dongwan Kook (Seoul, KR) addresses how women relate their artistic practice to motherhood or distance themselves from it. While Dongwan Kook depicts 40 weeks of a gestation period with free association drawings and texts to show the landscape of growth as one and multiple, Rabea Edel tells the story of a woman as a newborn mother with documentary pictures and auto-fictional strategies to express motherhood, love and postpartum depression.

Together with drawings, installation and photograph works, the two selected artists’ books, Rabea Edel's A Second Beating Heart (Shift Books, Berlin 2021) and Dongwan Kook's I am three or four or five (Boundary Books, Seoul 2022), provide an opportunity to look into the conjunction of motherhood and art in life, the sociocultural position of artist mothers, and their individual circumstances and engagement with the subject matter.

By bringing a light to the subject of women and mother artists in the contemporary art scene, einBuch.haus aims to engage women artists to continue their artistic career and break the taboo of mothers not being able to exhibit because of parenting.  

einBuch #27-1

A Second Beating Heart
Rabea Edel 

Shift Books, 2021

With an Essay by Rabea Edel, 42 analogue colour photographs
104 pp, 210 x 270 mm; German, Englisch
ISBN 978-3-948174-13-2  

einBuch #27-2

I am Three or Four or Five
Dongwan Kook  

Boundary Books, 2022

41 drawings with texts
116 pp, 220 × 280 mm; Englisch

ISBN 978-89-967937-4-8

Rabea Edel

Rabea Edel (*1982), lives as a freelance photographer and writer in Berlin. After studying literature in Siena and Rome, she studied at the renowned Ostkreuzschule für Fotografie with Sven Marquardt and Sibylle Fendt, among others. Previously, her debut novel Das Wasser, in dem wir schlafen (2006), as well as the second novel Ein dunkler Moment (2011) were published by Luchterhand Literaturverlag. She is a member of PEN Berlin and initiator of Prints for Ukraine. In spring 2021, her radio play Seeing Her Ghosts - Ihre Geister Sehen was premiered for Deutschlandfunk Kultur with Sandra Hüller and received the renowned ARD Radio Play Award (Audience Award). Her photo book A Second Beating Heart (SHIFT BOOKS 2021) was shortlisted for the Vonovia Award, the Belfast Photofestival and the Stiftung Buchkunst Prize, among others.

In her artistic work she often deals with the themes of motherhood and mental health, and works with other artists in performances and collaborative projects. She has received scholarships from the Berlin Senate, the German Literature Fund, the Academy of Arts at the Alfred Döblin Haus, was artist in residency at the Goethe Institutes in Slovenia and China, as well as a scholarship holder at the German Academy in Rome/Villa Massimo at Casa Baldi, and received the Art Prize for Literature from the Lotto Brandenburg Stiftung.

Dongwan Kook

Dongwan Kook (*1979) works on the unconsciousness and the way reaching it with drawing, painting, sculpture, and books. The dream archive work (since 2007) melts the relationship between herself and dreams into the characteristics of books and sculptures. Kook’s ‘free association’ drawing is a tool to discover herself in the present, and she explores all the possibilities that it can pursue. She is excellent at imaging difficulties in words with unique shapes and colors which give plenty of room to create the meaning together with the viewer's perspective. Being wary of the work disappearing into the artist's own inner agony, the dreamer pays attention to the artistic connection between the individual and the society by shifting the disciplined gaze to the social phenomena piercing her life.

Kook studied Graphic Design at Seoul National University in Seoul and received an M.A. in Book Arts from Camberwell College of Arts in London. Following her debut solo exhibition in 2011, Kook has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, both in Korea and internationally, including London, Rome, Paris, and Scotland. She won Chongkundang Yesuljisang (2023) and was selected as Public Art New Hero (2017), and was invited as an artist-in-residence at MMCA Residency Changdong (2020), Seoul Art Space Geumcheon (2016-2018), and Glenfiddich AIR (2012) in Scotland. She has a keen interest in the evolution of artists’ book and owns the independent publishing house “Boundary Books.”

Exhibition view: Rabea Edel & Dongwan Kook, Grapes and Seeds., einBuchhaus. 2023 (Photo: Rabea Edel)