During Rita Leppiniemi’s residency at the International Artist Studio Program in Korea, from March to May 2007, she was observing the city of Seoul, the busy citizens and the fragmented landscape. While walking for hours through the active and modern city, she discovered an extraordinary place: the Jong Myo Park.

The old people visiting the park show their openness and warm hospitality towards each other through dancing, singing, laughing and drinking together in public. The video In the Park shows a moment of escaping the city and breaking the social hierarchy through dancing for the joy of spring, and showing sincerity towards each other without material condition, age or sex.

The Jong Myo Park is more than a meeting place; it is a small edition of the Korean life style.

– Jae Won Jeong
Program manager at IASK

Rita Leppiniemi was born in Pietarsaari, Finland in 1967. She is using photography, video, computer, drawing, text and sound in order to explore the relationship between different levels of representation of reality and fiction. She is interested in cultural, historical and political situations and their interpretation depending on time, location and experience.

Her latest project: The Sample Report, a narrative drama made by sound sample for the Internet and Arabia Felix/ Yemen Latitudes, a publication about everydayness in Yemen.

Thanks to IASK, the International Artist Studio Program in Korea and National Museum of Contemporary Art in Korea