Artist Jung Yeondoo invites you to look closer at your neighbors — the strangers you might pass in an apartment elevator or a busy street — and imagine their dreams. This exhibition in PEM’s Jeffrey P. Beale Gallery highlights two major multipart photographic works: Evergreen Tower (2001) and Bewitched (2001-ongoing).

After attending art school in London, Jung returned to Seoul in the early 2000s and discovered that the city had become a “concrete forest” of high-rise apartment complexes. Among his new neighbors, Jung observed that the comforts of urban, middle-class life had also produced a sense of anonymity and isolation. Driven by curiosity, Jung began to ask the people around him about their hopes and aspirations and began using photography to connect with others.

The subjects that appear in Jung’s photographs are ordinary families and individuals with whom he collaborates to tell a deeper story. Whether asking people to open up their living room or share their innermost dreams, Jung uses the camera to show people as they are, but also as they wish to be seen.

Jung Yeondoo (born 1969, South Korea) uses photography, videography and sculpture to find connection amidst the anonymity of modern urban life. He has lived and worked in Seoul, South Korea, since 2000, after graduating from Seoul National University and finishing an M.F.A. at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Jung ‘s work was displayed in the Korea Pavilion at the 2005 Venice Biennial; in 2007, he became the youngest winner of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea’s Artist of the Year award. The original slides for Evergreen Tower (2001) are part of a 2019 gift of photography to PEM from the Joy of Giving Something (JGS) Foundation, Inc.

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Jung Yeondoo: Building Dreams is organized by the Peabody Essex Museum. This exhibition is made possible by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation and Carolyn and Peter S. Lynch and The Lynch Foundation. We thank Jennifer and Andrew Borggaard, James B. and Mary Lou Hawkes, Chip and Susan Robie, and Timothy T. Hilton as supporters of the Exhibition Innovation Fund. We also recognize the generosity of the East India Marine Associates of the Peabody Essex Museum.