Heuksan, dark and fearful
흑산, 어둡고 무서운
2022.11.23.-12.12
Artist|Soyo Lee
Text|Moonseok Yi
Design|Studio MANMANSE
Photo|Youngdon Jung
“The name Heuksan is dark and fearful.(黑山之名 幽晦加怖)”
This exhibition begins with this single line from the preface of Jasaneobo (“The Book of Fish”). Written by late Joseon-era scholar Jeong Yak-jeon during his exile on Heuksan Island, Jasaneobo is a book that documents the fish species of the region. Jeong, expressing his negative feelings about the island’s name “Heuksan” (黑山, meaning “black mountain”), replaced it with “Jasan (玆山)” in his writing. His objective approach—classifying marine life by appearance, describing their behaviors based on observation, and consulting local fishermen—stands in contrast to his subjective decision to rename the island based on its “dark and fearful” connotations.
Artist Soyo Lee opened the exhibition Jasaneobo: A Natural History Without Pictures and later developed a series of works under the same title. Lee, whose practice explores the sociocultural interpretation of living organisms, found inspiration in Jeong’s approach to creating the book—specifically his decision to exclude illustrations of fish. The choice followed the advice of his brother, Jeong Yak-yong, that pictures were unreliable and that only words should remain.
This skepticism toward images as a means of representing life contrasts sharply with today’s reliance on high-resolution imagery. The scene where a form of representation considered to ensure objectivity is dismissed invites reflection on Jeong’s earlier subjective renaming of the island. It also raises a broader question: How do humans represent non-human life forms, and what forms of representation do we trust?
This exhibition addresses the ways humans represent nature, and the mutual distrust embedded in those representations. In her work, Soyo Lee employs three methods to represent living organisms: preserved specimens, textual information, and plate images. These three approaches are not unlike the methods used in the Joseon era, where the deceased were commemorated through their physical remains in tombs, written records in ancestral tablets, and visual depictions in portraits. Each form of representation was valued differently, with frequent debates about whether portraits could be trusted as acurate depictions.
Jasaneobo can be seen as an extension of this skepticism toward image-based representation, evolvinging, much like the exhibition’s title, into a “natural history without pictures.” Heuksan Island becomes both the setting for this natural history and a stage for the 19th-century knowledge ecosystem shaped by darkness and fear.
In the exhibition space, certain fish species featured in Jasaneobo are arranged using the three aforementioned methods. The bodies of dead fish, preserved in alcohol, are displayed on tables as wet specimens. The experiences of the author, interpreters, and local fishermen engaging with the fish are presented as written accounts on the walls. Photographs and iconic images of fish are printed and mounted on glass surfaces. To fully immerse oneself in the essence of living organisms, it would be ideal to consider these three methods of representation collectively. Yet, humans have long tended to choose selectively among them, assigning differing levels of trust and significance to each form of representation.
Today, humanity strives to place non-human life forms on more equal footing and to understand them better. This effort stems from a belief in the possibility of communication between species, though such belief is often questioned due to linguistic gaps. Through Soyo Lee’s work, we are reminded that the foundation of humanity’s relationship with nature may rest not on mutual trust but on mutual distrust. Even among humans, we distrust each other’s representations of the same subject. Yet, by acknowledging this lack of understanding and maintaining the will to bridge it, we can achieve a fragile coexistence. Observing the three distinct interpretations within the exhibition space and tracing the history of such distrust reveals a critical insight: the premise for coexistence lies not in the confidence that we understand, but in the acknowledgment that we have always distrusted.
Text by Moonseok Yi





