Sara Sejin Chang (Sara van der Heide) – Healing colonial narratives and ruptures

An evening on naerimgut (Korean shamanistic initiation), healing colonial narratives and ancestral ruptures, Dutch Cabinets, mothers and mountains, Art History, Ethnographic Museums, and a German Library in Pyongyang.

Screening of Four Months, Four Million Light Years (2020,  '35) followed by a conversation with Dr. Ronald Rose-Antoinette.

Sara Sejin Chang has  created a rich body of work that traverses an array of formats and mediums, including film, immersive film- and sound installations, performances, and painting. Chang combines spiritual evocations, (historical) research and the unraveling of colonial narratives creating works that act as historical repair, healing and belonging. Chang questions Eurocentric systems of categorization, racialization and its penetration in all levels of life and contemporary Western society. Her work can be seen as poetic and intimate gestures that transform the modernistic view of meaning, value and time, transcending the biographical and the personal.

Chang received naerimgut (Korean shamanistic initiation) in 2023 by Kim Hye Kyoung, the successor of national shaman Kim Keum Hwa. In 2023 she was awarded the Theodora Niemeijer Prize, the largest Dutch art prize in the Netherlands. Currently, she is a fellow of the Berlin Artistic Research Grant Program (2022-2023). She had recent solo exhibitions at Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2022-2023); Centraal Museum, Utrecht (2023); Rozenstraat 'a rose is a rose is a rose', Amsterdam (2023); and ARGOS, Brussels, (2021). Two-person exhibition with Youngjoon Kwak at ARKO, Seoul (2022). She has participated in the following biennials: Busan Biennale, Busan (2022) ; the 11th Berlin Biennale, Berlin (2020); Dhaka Art Summit (2019); and participated in group exhibitions at The Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and M HKA, Antwerp.