In Korean society—which is transitioning toward a multicultural, multi-racial, and multi-ethnic society—people rarely use museums as a field of “arts,” “life,” or “labor.” We need to overcome this barrier and take time to change our institutions and their way of thinking to become inclusive of diverse social dimensions. The project OPENING HOURS sets up a Korean museum as a specific geopolitical situation; the artist examines a particular occasion in which the museum hires an immigrant worker as a museum facility manager and what occurs between the museum, artworks, the exhibition space, and between the hired manager and audience. The project illuminates a political structure and the relationships among its actors. The artist collaborated with an agency for foreign workers in Ansan, Gyeonggi-do; she proposed work conditions, hired a worker, and educated him to work as a museum hall manager. The hired immigrant worker presents a performance in Mediacity Seoul 2016 where he works as exhibition hall manager. The overall processes of the project are to be recorded as a documentary film.
