Chang Gyeong

Changgyeonggung Palace is a space where the zoo, amusement park, and ancient palace overlap. Remembered as a childhood fantasy with a sense of unease, it becomes a layered image of animal suffering and everyday landscapes shaped by war and liberation. Rhythmic sound over superimposed images reveals fractures between past and present, fantasy and trauma.

Lee Jangwook: 'As a child, the zoo was a space that gave me a sense of fantasy. In particular, Changgyeonggung (then called Changgyeongwon) was a strange place where a zoo, an amusement park, and an old palace coexisted. Childhood memories perhaps remain as emotional vestiges — of events there, of people, of food, of weather, and so on. It was not a specific event, but a personal emotion lying somewhere at the boundary between reality and the virtual. Through education, I learned that the coexistence of these elements stemmed from the tragic modern history of Changgyeonggung (during the Japanese occupation, a zoo was created to mock and degrade Changgyeonggung Palace).

Even then, Changgyeonggung has a history of animals being victimised during liberation and the Korean War. After learning this history, the space of Changgyeonggung Palace no longer aroused any of my earlier emotional responses. Emotional memories that had formed ambiguous boundaries between reality and fantasy began to split in two, and at the same time no emotion remained on either side.’