Exploring Leymusoom Garden

Public Programs

Exploring Leymusoom Garden

Conversation, performance, and screening presented by YBCA |

Saturday, February 3, 2024, 1–4 PM

Join us for an afternoon exploring Bay Area Now 9 artist Heesoo Kwon’s Leymusoom Garden through traditional Korean games and performance, a conversation with Kwon and her multidisciplinary Leymusoom Garden collaborators, and a screening of Kwon’s video piece Leymusoom Garden: New Sun.

In her multimedia practice, artist Heesoo Kwon is a world builder and the founder of Leymusoom, an autobiographical feminist religion and utopia that serves as an ever-evolving framework to explore her family histories and communal feminist liberation. In her newest work, Leymusoom Garden, Kwon reflects on the Korean shamanistic worldview, the Dokkaebi folk myth (Korean: 도깨비), the Mago creator myth, Skywoman myth, and her own female ancestors.

Arrive early to learn about and play a selection of traditional Korean games from 1–2pm. The program will begin with community arts group Kkiri Kkiri leading a Samulnori, a performance practice based on traditional percussion music from farming communities in Korea. After, Heesoo Kwon will be joined by Leymusoom Garden collaborators: Zoë Latzer, curator of Kwon’s solo exhibition Leymusoom Garden: Following Naked Dancing and Long Dreaming at ICA San Jose, Karen Cheung, curator of the group exhibition emerging light from the longest night at SWIM Gallery, and the co-gardeners of Leymusoom Garden, Danna Kim and Youjin Han. The program concludes with a screening of Kwon’s most recent video work Leymusoom Garden: New Sun.

This program is presented in partnership with ICA San Jose, whose exhibition Leymusoom Garden: Following Naked Dancing and Long Dreaming is up through February 18, 2024, and SWIM Gallery.

Heesoo Kwon

Heesoo Kwon is a multidisciplinary artist from South Korea currently based in the Bay Area, CA. In 2017, Kwon initiated an autobiographical feminist religion Leymusoom as an ever-evolving framework to explore her family histories and communal feminist liberation.

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Dong Ji Collective

Dong Ji Collective is a Korean diasporic artist collective made up of 7 artists based in the SF Bay Area—Youjin Han, Jane Kang, Danna Kim, Nahyun Kim, Heesoo Kwon, Julie Moon, and Sun Park.

Kkiri Kkiri

Kkiri Kkiri is a community group dedicated to learning, sharing, and celebrating Samulnori and other Korean traditions and culture, led by professional musician and amateur researcher Roger Kim. Samulnori is a performance practice based on traditional percussion music from farming communities in Korea.

Karen Cheung

Karen Cheung is a writer and researcher based in Oakland, CA. Her current research explores the ephemerality and effect of performance art in the context of audience participation. Her writings have appeared in Art Practical, Open Space, MARCH Journal of Art and Strategy, and Voices in Contemporary Art Journal. She has held various positions at KADIST, the Vancouver Art Gallery, De Young Museum, and Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, CA. She is currently curatorial associate of media arts at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Zoë Latzer

Zoë Latzer (she/they) is a curator and writer interested in post-colonial theory, queerness, and identity politics. She is dedicated to curating contemporary art exhibitions with an emphasis on emerging and mid-career Bay Area artists. She is the Curator and Director of Public Programs at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) San José. She has recently curated solo exhibitions by Adia Millett in Wisdom Keepers and Heesoo Kwon in Leymusoom Garden: Following Naked Dancing and Long Dreaming. She co-curated an upcoming spring exhibition at ICA San José titled P L A C E: Reckonings by Asian American Artists. She has held various positions in the arts, including the Co-Director of CCA’s PLAYsPACE, and engagements with San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, White Cube, and other galleries within the Bay Area.

Bay Area Now 9 is curated by Martin Strickland, Director of Curatorial Initiatives, and Fiona Ball, independent curator; under the artistic leadership of Amy Kisch, Head of Art + Public Programming; and developed with the inaugural YBCA Curatorial Counsel of curators, artists, activists, and cultural workers working across the Bay Area’s creative disciplines and communities: Erina Alejo, Gina Basso, Jason Bayani, Mina Girgis, Candace Huey, José Ome Navarrete Mazatl, Aay Preston Myint, and Lehua Taitano.

The BAN9 YBCA project team also includes Yoni Asega, Manager of Exhibition Design; David Tim, Head Preparator, Project Design; Bella Manfredi, Senior Preparator, Multimedia + Graphics; O Soo Vegh, Exhibition Project Manager + Registrar; Rea Lynn de Guzman, Manager of Public + Educational Programs; Flavia Mora, Public + Educational Programs Coordinator; and Cori Lucas, Community + Program Event Manager.

YBCA is grateful to the preparator team who made this exhibition possible: Isaiah Acosta, Amy Bergstein, Micha Dudgeonwood, Owen Goodwin, German Hoyle, Calvin Jones, Linden Julien-Lehr, Lauren Kenwood, Benjamin Leon, Maren Mouhanna, Éamon McGivern, Christian Neill, David Prigge, and Kelsey Westphal.

YBCA Programs are made possible in part by the City and County of San Francisco, MacKenzie Scott, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC), #StartSmall, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Marilyn Conrad Trust, New England Foundation for the Arts, California Arts Council, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, William G. Irwin Charity Foundation, The Bernard Osher Foundation, The Sato Foundation, Gaia Fund, Office of Mayor London N. Breed, San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development, Headlands Center for the Arts, ICA San Francisco, Bay Area Mind and Music Society, GitHub, Harvey and Leslie Wagner Foundation, McNabb Foundation, Raymond James Charitable, Savant Group Charitable Foundation, The Building Works, Fremont Group Foundation, and YBCA Members.

Lead image: Photo courtesy of San Jose Museum of Art