Join artist Emerita Baik in conversation with Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art and Collections, Simon Gennard on the opening day of her new Open Window exhibition O.
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Emerita Baik
Open Window
9 July - 7 November 2022
In the Open Window, Te Whanganui-a-Tara-based artist Emerita Baik presents a new installation. Made up of a series of soft sculptures, based on the form of carved wooden Mandarin ducks often gifted in pairs at Korean wedding ceremonies. Mandarin ducks mate for life, and will mourn for their partner after their passing. As a gift, the ducks contain wishes of wealth, health, fidelity and fertility.
Baik’s ducks are constructed from fragments of hand-dyed and painted fabrics and wrapped in bottari - a method for bundling goods for gifting or migrating. Baik’s materials are redolent of domestic comfort; of making home and finding rest. In their arrangement, though, the ducks gesture to a sense of displacement, motion, and the lived experiences of existing between cultures and languages.
