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Mirae kh Rhee: Hand-Me-Down
Mirae kh Rhee asks how objects reached their places in collections and who collects and why, in a cabinet-of-curiosities project from a transnational feminist, decolonial view.
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In a photograph, Mirae kh Rhee stands in a hanbok, parting a leopard-print curtain in front of a full-size bookcase copied from a 19th-century Korean painting. The books are only pictures. Above them a neon sign quotes the 18th-century King Jeongjo: "You thought these were books? These are not books; this is a picture."
The two rooms set Rhee's work beside the museum's own chaekgeori, a painted screen of books and scholars' treasures, a genre made for Confucian men of learning. In the middle stands a bookshelf sewn from textile, with every compartment empty. Facing it, a wall cabinet of curiosities holds keepsakes given by people from Rhee's circle, each with a questionnaire explaining why it belongs.
Come ready to read: several works turn on words, from that neon line to Edward Said's Orientalism rewritten as haiku. It is on the third floor, rooms 318 and 319, and included in the 9 euro Ethnological Collections and Asian Art ticket. Closed Tuesdays.
Look for
The Artist and Her Books
Rhee in a hanbok parts a leopard-print curtain before a bookcase recreated from Yi Eungnok's painting, under King Jeongjo's neon line in Classical Chinese.
The empty textile bookshelf
On a plinth at the centre, an unfolded shelf sewn from muted fabric with every compartment empty, which Rhee calls only the illusion of a vessel.
Wunderkammerkŏri
A wall crammed with personal finds and mementoes donated by Rhee's circle, sorted by a 1565 museum classification system and set on Baroque-style plinths.
Patterns of Illegibility
Made for this show: chinoiserie figures from an 18th-century Meissen pattern book with their faces covered by gold circles, inscribed with Said's Orientalism as haiku, flanked by two chinoiserie figures on loan.
The Guardians
Drawings of 18th-century Meissen porcelain figures given the faces of Hollywood stars such as Tilda Swinton and Scarlett Johansson, aimed at yellowface and whitewashed casting.
Good for
- Locals Who've Seen It All
- Nerding Out
Skip if
You came for Asian antiquities: this is mostly contemporary art about how museums collected them.
Free in the same building
- Flashbacks36 objects placed throughout the building in unconventional settings, each recalling a moment from the site's history.
- History of the SiteFree displays covering 800 years of Schlossplatz, from medieval cellars and palace sculptures to the Palace of the Republic, with original objects and media stations.
- Impressions. The Humboldt BrothersFree display on Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt's lives, curiosity and cosmopolitan worldview, in the ground-floor stairwell hall.
- Palace CellarFree walk through the archaeological remains of a medieval monastery and the original palace foundations beneath the building.
- The Gate of SanchiFree full-scale replica of the East Gate of the Great Stupa of Sanchi, a UNESCO World Heritage site in India, installed outside on the Lustgarten side.
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Image credits
9
- Mirae kh Rhee: Hand-Me-Down© Mirae kh Rhee, Foto: Choi Chul Lim
- A Country in a Container – The Disposal of East German State SymbolsCourtesy of DDR Museum
- Founded on Antiquity: Berlin's First MuseumPhoto: Johannes Laurentius
- Nature and German History. Faith – Biology – PowerCourtesy of Deutsches Historisches Museum
- Humboldt ForumMike Peel / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- DDR MuseumAndreas Praefcke / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0
- Altes MuseumJean-Pierre Dalbéra / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
- Deutsches Historisches MuseumAvda / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Alte NationalgalerieManfred Brückels / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain