TSMGO | The show must go on

Beyond the exhibition space,

“The show must go on”

<The Show Must Go On> (TSMGO) started in July 2012 with Korean artists. It is planned as a reaction of international biennale fever. There are so many biennales than we imagine, but only a few artists from Korea are invited. Until now, only the occasional group exhibitions of Korean Contemporary Art offered a chance for Korean artists to present themselves abroad. These national group exhibitions provide a helpful first step for the artists, as in the case of Chinese and Japanese artists. Such group exhibitions, however, seldom manage to show the full depth of an artist’s work. It is therefore difficult to present an artist where his presence is limited to one or two pieces of work. Even though there are many interesting themes in biennale from great curators, most artists have no chance to think about it or be involved in this interesting discourse. It is not many different from curators. So, we would like to make our own field.

The initial plan of this project also focused on promoting Korean contemporary artists abroad in 2012. We made a strategy to organize talks and workshops instead of exhibitions. It is because artists’ ‘works’(and often not the artists themselves)are invited to many international exhibitions. But artists hardly have a chance to go abroad and talk about what they are thinking with foreign audience. For those reasons, we organized artists’ talk program in London, Kota Kinabalu, Seoul in 2012, and the project called ‘traveling portfolio suitcase’.

The mobile art exhibition,

‘Traveling Portfolios Suitcase’

Art works in a bag is a fascinating idea. It is quite handy to transport compared with the work transportation itself. It might be an effective way to introduce art works to the audiences with diverse perspectives, rather than by the printed catalogue. I think Marcel Duchamp already proved this well with his <Boite en Valise>. Inspired by Duchamp’s idea, <The Show Must Go On> started as an artists’ traveling portfolio suitcase project since July 2012. It is intended to promote artists’ works. Therefore, we ask them to make their own portfolio suitcase and we transport it to the curators who might be interested in it. The curator who gets the suitcase can keep for one month. In this way, the suitcase will meet 12 curators for one year. After a long journey, all suitcases will be gathered in Korea for an exhibition.

The short history of TSMGO

2012 London, UK

2013 Singapore

2013 Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia

2013 Venice, Italy

2014 Seoul, S. Korea (exhibition version)

2014 Paris, France

2015 L.A., USA

2018 Warsaw, Poland (exhibition version)

2020 Incheon, S. Korea

TSMGO Process

1) 6 artists from S.Korea will participate in TSMGO2023 Canada

2) we invited 3 curators from abroad.

3) we transport suitcases to curators. Each curator has suitcases.

4) curators keep suitcases where s/he would like to keep for one month.

it does not have to be installed or open to the public, make exhibition.

s/he can have them in the house, or the office any place where s/he wants to have.

the curator sent a photo of suitcases in her/his places.

5) after few months, s/he returns them to us. (using our DHL account) with short comments on work.

TSMGO CANADA Credit

Program Director : Nathalie Boseul Shin

Coodinator : Youngeun Kim

Photography : Ye eun Lee

Website Design : Eugene Kim

Organizer/ Host : Total Museum

Sponsor : Arts Council Korea

Artist : Suknam Yun, Soonjong Lee, Jangpa, Youngjoo Cho, Hong Lee Hyunsook, Black Jaguar

Curator : Vicki Sung-yeon kwon, Ji-eun Sung, Haymin park

thanks to

Sooyoung Leam

TSMGO2020 x IAP (Incheon Art Platform)

The project, TSMGO2020 was initiated in collaboration with the Incheon Art Platform. Due to COVID19, cultural and artistic institutions were closed, and even borders were closed. Large biennales were postponed or canceled. It was time to ask if the format of past international exchange was still valid or not. The 14 resident artists of the Incheon Art Platform included their works into the separate portfolio suitcases with the artists’ notes. After the overseas curators receive the suitcases, they will keep the suitcases for a month and will review the work while writing comments about art works and taking photos of how each portfolio suitcase gets displayed in the unique places. 1 month later, the curators will resend the portfolio bags to Korea with their comments and display photos enclosed.

TSMGO x IAP Credit

Program Director : Nathalie Boseul Shin

IAP curator : Young-ri Lee

Coodinator : Sujin Han

Assist : Yedam Koo

Interview : Jaewoo Oh

Photography : Ginhun Noh

Website Design : Eugene Kim (bpm122)

Organizer : Incheon Art Platform, Total Museum

Host : Incheon Foundation for Arts and Culture

Artist : Kyoungjae Cho, Sooryeon Choe, Bangjoo Kim, Inyoung Kim, Minjung Kim, HAna Kim, Hyeyeon Kim, Byungsu Lee, Nosik Lim, Ye-eun Min, Earl Park, Jihye Park, Jiwon Yang, Jiyoung Yoon

Curator : Amano Taro, Anna Harding, Barbara Cuetro, Haily Grenet, Jia-Zhen Tsai, Melanie Su zhen Pocock, Shazeb Shaikh

thanks to

Doyoung Kim, JeongWoo Lee, Chan Wi