Jane Jin Kaisen: Wreckage

The Haus for Media Art Oldenburg presents a solo exhibition by Danish-Korean artist Jane Jin Kaisen within the historic walls of the Pulverturm—a site-specific installation of three poetic, immersive video works based on meticulous historical research. Offering (2023) and Wreckage (2024) are joined by a newly produced third work, created to echo the tower’s architecture.

As a descendant of Jeju Island’s haenyeo (sea women) divers, celebrated for their ability to remain deep underwater without equipment, Kaisen has spent more than fifteen years researching their history through the lens of Korea’s colonial past. The sea becomes both threat and promise—an archive of memory, and a vessel of matrilineal knowledge. Working with a group of free divers involved in environmental preservation, the artist developed an underwater choreography drawn from Jeju’s shamanic sea myths and using sochang. As a symbol of the cycle of human life and death, this long white cloth is an essential part of rites of passage in Korea. The works, filmed in slow motion, portray the ocean as a vessel and medium of knowledge and matrilineal connection, as well as a place of exile and death.

As the sociologist Avery F. Gordon writes of Kaisen’s work: “We are underwater and we are also in the underworld. I was summoned. The ground is at that liminal space where the water’s deep meets the water’s surface, at its vertical edge.”¹

Divisions and thresholds run through the installation—above and under water, across history and politics. The structure of the video piece Wreckage itself contains two entwined narratives: One is told through slow-motioned archival materials from October 1945 that show soldiers disposing of Japanese weapons into the sea, as ordered by the US Army; the other is a song of grief of a mother recalling the bloody end of her son. Between 1947 and 54, under US military influence, the Jeju Massacre claimed countless civilians, many of whom were given to the same sea. This tragedy is carried in Wreckage in the lament sung by the late Shaman Koh Sunahn, a massacre survivor whom Kaisen documented for a decade—her voice shifting between mother and drowned son.

In Offering, graceful female figures appear bearing offerings that allude to shamanic rituals, inviting the viewer to interpret the scenes within the realm of the spiritual and of sorrow.

The exhibition unfolds across both levels of the Pulverturm: two works in the dome above, and a projection onto the floor below, visible through a circular opening—a vertical line of sight binding the two worlds. The soundscapes of both videos blend within the unique, dome-like architecture of the Pulverturm, creating a special atmosphere in which viewers are immersed in both the underwater world depicted in the works and the architecture of the venue.

Jane Jin Kaisen, born 1980 in Jeju Island, Korea, lives in Denmark. Her work spans video, film, photography, performance, and text—poetic, polyphonic, and feminist—exploring memory, migration, borders, and the space where lived experience meets political history. She represented Korea at the 58th Venice Biennale and her work has been shown in a wide range of contexts globally. 

The Pulverturm (Powder Tower) belongs to the former castle wall of Oldenburg and is the only remaining building of the fortifications of the city. Its history goes back to 1529, when Count Anton I (1505–1573) renewed the city’s military facilities. Since 1996, the Pulverturm has been used for cultural purposes during the summer months.

Opening hours: Friday, 2–6pm; Saturday and Sunday, 11am–6pm

1. Avery F. Gordon, “Descending upon the Wreckage,” in Island Beyond the Sea, by Jane Jin Kaisen (Mousse Publishing, forthcoming).