“Closer than we admit”
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| free admission |
| Mechanische Arena in the Foyer and 3rd floor |
| German |
| Part of: SPÄTI |
| Belongs to: Nothing as Our Ground |
What does it mean to care for one another? Which forms of intimacy and memory find their way into the public sphere, and which remain invisible? In their artistic works on the body, care and intimacy, the artists Iden Sungyoung Kim, Jaewon Kim and Sarnt Utamachote explore these questions.
Iden Sungyoung Kim focuses on caring for a family member and challenges society’s devaluation of care work. Jaewon Kim navigates the intimacy of a relationship shaped by HIV, demonstrating how trust and tenderness emerge where stigma is expected. Sarnt Utamachote examines the care work of queer and trans women from Thailand, asking when care turns into exploitation, whose bodies are desired, and whose knowledge is appropriated.
The three positions are linked by their engagement with queer memory and that which is not passed down. Through lullabies, analogue photographs and superimposed film sequences, forms of memory emerge that exist far removed from institutional archives.
Here, the political does not manifest itself as a grand gesture. Rather, it lies hidden in the intimate: in the nursing bed, in shared intimacy, in an infant’s gaze upon its singing mother.
The artist talk explores how queer experiences of caring, remembering and living together are not marginal phenomena, and how they broaden our understanding of care, family and belonging.
The works by Iden Sungyoung Kim, Jaewon Kim and Sarnt Utamachote can be seen until 31 August 2026 in the exhibition “Nothing as Our Ground”. The exhibition was curated by Hai Nam Nguyen and Minh Duc Pham and forms part of the Humboldt Forum’s programme year “Family Matters”.
Following the talk we’ll visit the exhibition together.
Pariticipants
Iden Sungyoung Kim, Jaewon Kim, Sarnt Utamachote (Artists)
Minh Duc Pham (Curation, Host)
Hai Nam Nguyen (Curation)
Iden Sungyoung Kim is an artist and art historian who observes, examines, documents and reconstructs the political ironies of deeply entrenched, invisible regimes. She explores the socio-political discourse and polarisation surrounding nuclear research and aims, through her video, photographic and installation works, to stimulate critical engagement with current political, techno-ethical and ecological challenges. Particularly interested in the political narratives of micro-stories hidden within macro-stories, she has engaged with socio-political debates on disability and the practice of care, drawing on her own experiences of physical disability.
Jaewon Kim (he/him) is a visual artist based in Seoul. Working with video, photography, and writing, he explores visibility, memory, and the uneven dynamics between bodies, illness, and social contexts. His practice engages mixed temporality, blurring past, present, and future, and traces intimacy and loss through objects, events, and landscapes within queer and HIV-related contexts. Rather than framing the condition after infection as rupture, he approaches it as an overlapping structure of existence. His practice reconsiders the present in relation to these conditions, forming a queer practice that engages the structures of post-AIDS and biopolitical discourse. His work has been presented internationally in Seoul, New York, Berlin, Taipei, Philadelphia, Hong Kong, Brisbane, and Amsterdam, and he is currently based at SeMA Nanji Residency (Korea).
Sarnt Utamachote is a Southeast Asian nonbinary filmmaker and curator based in Berlin. Their work explores questions of migration, community, archives, and queerness across film, visual art, and writing. Their ongoing exhibition „In Nobody’s Service” has been presented at Galerie Wedding Berlin, Thailand Biennale in Phuket and Goethe-Institut Southeast Asia’s Dealing In Distance. Together with Hai Nam Nguyen, Ferdiansyah Thajib and Thao Ho, they co-curated „Young Birds From Strange Mountains” at the Schwules Museum Berlin. In 2024 their short film „I don’t want to be just a memory” premiered at the 74th Berlinale Forum Expanded. As part of the founding team of Sinema Transtopia, they curate film programs with alternative approaches to archives, exile, and diasporic communities. Sarnt works as film programmer for XPOSED Queer Film Festival Berlin and Short Film Festival Hamburg, and as guest programmer for CinemAsia Amsterdam and Oberhausen Kurzfilmtage. They are currently a fellow resident at Braunschweig Projects of HBK (2026–27).