Happy New Year

Jinjoon Lee’s Happy New Year juxtaposes the jubilant celebrations of a new year with the stark realities of war, disaster and environmental crises. Using a game engine, Lee constructs a digital utopia – an inviting yet deceptive landscape inspired by AI-generated worlds. This serene facade underscores how technology can obscure pressing global issues, cultivating collective apathy amidst unfolding tragedies.

Lee combines classical art traditions such as Korean Chaekgeori (still-life paintings), Western cabinets of curiosities, and the Buddhist Wheel of Reincarnation into his modern, cinematic installation. These rich cultural references infuse the work with profound depth, where beauty and decay coexist, and heaven and hell perpetually alternate.

Presented in the Kijkmodule at Rotterdam’s Central Station, the installation invites viewers to reflect on the tension between illusion and reality. Each vignette within Happy New Year reveals a crisis – wars, climate devastation and human suffering – unfolding against the backdrop of global festivities. The viewer is poetically guided through these scenes, prompting contemplation of humanity’s fleeting existence and the dangers of prioritising spectacle over substance.

Happy New Year is a striking reflection on humanity’s shared vulnerability. Lee challenges us to resist the seduction of virtual utopias and acknowledge our presence in a world both precarious and deeply interdependent.

– Eva Langerak

Trailer

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