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haeahn woo kwon 👹+🦠x👻

@know_no_kwon

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“We understand the makeshift as an intuitive, responsive methodology. By observing what is available, it’s possible to arrive at recombinant solutions that answer necessity’s call via improvisation. The specificity of the makeshift gets us thinking about the complexity of our overly industrialized and technologized lives, where material excess and precarity mingle. Many relatives among our grandparents’ generation survived periods of war and rationing that motivated the creative repurposing of whatever happened to be at hand to improve domestic life. This has surely influenced what we do, which is partly to ask how we can work with what is here to reflect how things are.” pp. 151

HaeAhn Paul Kwon Kajander is a collaborative duo currently based in Punamu’kwati’jk/Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Through the threading together of given and family names, their practice wrestles with the notion of individual authorship and addresses the constructedness of identity. Their work has been presented in numerous exhibition contexts, including Mercer Union (Toronto), Franz Kaka (Toronto), Daniel Faria (Toronto), the Transmedia Art Festival (Chilgok-gun), Kunstverein Toronto (Toronto), The Real DMZ Project (Paju), Galerie SAW (Ottawa), Galerie Nicolas Robert (Toronto), Trilobite et le Pneu (Montréal), Jack Barrett Gallery (New York), and The Small Arms Inspection Building (Mississauga). Their work is represented by Franz Kaka, and they teach at NSCAD University in Kjipuktuk/Halifax.

Image courtesy of @know_no_kwon, @pawl_khjander, and @franzkaka.

This week, we’re introducing the artists featured in Liminal Figures, an anthology of interviews with fifteen diasporic Korean artists, co-published by @gyopo.us and @the_floorplan. Please join us at our launch event in LA on 6/27, and pre-order the book at the link in bio. 📫 by @know_no_kwon

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17

4 months ago

Last days of “How Is Where You Are” at Mercer Union
🧭
🕯️ Its final hours will culminate in a collaborative percussive experiment hosted by Germaine Liu’s Imaginary Percussion Ensemble, this Saturday, Jan. 17th, 5pm.
📞
🪑
📷 by LFDocumentation.
🥚Many thanks to Theresa Wang (@wangtheresaa), @MercerUnion,
@Canada.Council, @PartnersinArtCanada, and Fan Wu (@abolishedbauble), whose generous exhibition text still finds us swirling. 🚽🔑 From its last paragraph:

Two weeks ago I remembered eggs as a source / of protein at Bloor Fruit Market, that standard for / affordable produce prices frozen in 2008 Toronto.
At age 33, from a rascal at Home Hardware, I learned / the differences between LED and incandescent / lightbulbs and the phrase “Not for use / in totally enclosed luminaires.” Changing my / bathroom shower bulb I’m gripped by a vision of my /
house burning down, my already dead pine bonsai dying twice.
Is the world of immanence in which we live a “totally / enclosed luminaire”? May I change my fate, set since I were a boy?
Is ‘Freedom’ having
nothing but a compass
drowned in a latrine
to tell me: where now? taken in Mercer Union, a centre for contemporary art by @know_no_kwon

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9 months ago

what’s behind how is where you are

🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭

Our exhibition @mercerunion closes this Saturday with a performance event by Germaine Liu + the Imaginary Percussion Ensemble - 5pm 17 January - registration required!

🥁🛢️📦📫📮🎵🪨🏓🪩🔮🪇 
Many thanks:

@canada.council
@partnersinartcanada
@abolishedbauble
@wangtheresaa
@franzkaka by @know_no_kwon

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8

9 months ago

A highlight of 2025 was the legend Jesse Jones visited NSCAD.

She gave a profound lecture at the Halifax Public Library and held an epic three day iteration of the workshop “The State Object,”culminating in a collaborative student exhibition, “Keepbreak.”

Using a haptic methodology, the workshop used objects and touch to ask the question: how has the law or the State touched our lives? The workshop aimed to question not IF but rather, HOW our work as artists is political. The collaborative exhibition, hosted at the Treaty Space Gallery was staged as a polyphonic barricade of objects in relation and resistance.

Humbled by Jesse’s commitment to art pedagogy and by the incredible NSCAD students who brought these sessions to life.

@jessepresleyjones
@annieprodo
@treatyspacegallery
@annaleonowensgallery
@nscaduniversity taken in NSCAD University by @know_no_kwon

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2

10 months ago

Our solo exhibition opens tomorrow night, 7-10pm, Oct. 17, 2025 at Mercer Union, Toronto.

This exhibition was born out of long term dedication and graceful stewardship of Theresa Wang @wangtheresaa, seasoned technical assistance from Aamna Muzaffar @adotmdot, and competent and caring install team: Layne @laynemarley, Vero @vero.suna, and Vanessa @vanessa.b.rieger. The exhibition brochure text by Fan Wu @abolishedbauble moved us to relive the poetic depths and lightness this world has had to offer to create this show.

_
“How Is Where You Are” builds an underlying narrative that traces the idea of personal and collective lineage: how did we get here where we are now? Through references to imperial systems of measurement and arbitrarily drawn border barriers, the artists reveal the enduring legacies of empire that continue to govern us and the standardized ways of moving through the world that are passed on as immutable fact. Yet the artists also deny us simple conclusions, leaving narratives of origin deliberately unresolved, while allowing heterogeneous connections, new potentials, and the indeterminable to shift in and out of focus.

-@mercerunion

HaeAhn Paul Kwon Kajander
Oct. 17, 2025 - Jan. 18, 2026 taken in Mercer Union, a centre for contemporary art by @know_no_kwon

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6

a year ago

Our show @mercerunion opens Friday October 17 at 7pm. Truly grateful to @wangtheresaa for commissioning this new body of work and for so thoughtfully shepherding us along the way in making this exhibition. 💖 There are many ppl we have to thank over the coming months, but we’ll start by acknowledging the 💕📡 profoundly attuned 💕📡 text by @abolishedbauble (available in print from the gallery) and phenomenal exhibition support from @adotmdot 🔎and the super crew 💪🏼 @laynemarley 🧶@vero.suna 📐 @vanessa.b.rieger 💞 If you’re in Toronto we hope you can join us Friday night 🤗 by @know_no_kwon

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6

a year ago

‘Shape of a City’ @franzkaka is on view until Feb 9th.

𝐃𝐢𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐞 𝐍/𝐒, (2023) part of a series of pounded aluminum impressions made in Seoul by ⬆️ borrowing ⬆️ sewer grates these past two summers.

Grateful to be in this thoughtful group show alongside:

Lotus L. Kang, Tony Romano, Elif Saydam, Matthew Schrader, Alex Turgeon, Alix Vernet

From @franzkaka

The Shape of a City features artists whose work engages the physical realities of the cities in which they live and work to investigate how these materials shape and are shaped by political, social and economic forces. Taking it’s name from the title of the French Surrealist writer Julien Gracq’s portrait of his home city of Nantes, The Shape of a City presents a fragmented view of the urban environment and the multifaceted histories layered upon its surfaces. Paying particular attention to contours, edges, and boundaries, the works include collected and recorded fragments that exist at the limits separating public and private space. These divisions are seldom static and though the city may at times appear cold and unyielding, its shape remains contingent and ever evolving. by @know_no_kwon

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10

2 years ago

𝑺𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒆𝒍 𝑷𝒐𝒈 𝑳𝒊𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝑨𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝑻𝒐𝒓𝒐𝒏𝒕𝒐 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟓 [ 𝑺.𝑷.𝑳.𝑨.𝑻. ’25] coincides with this week’s transition to the next lunar year; we are honoured to share this final chapter of the 𝗪𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗖𝗮𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗿, contributed by the incomparable Jeanne Randolph✨

This work consists of 2000 custom-printed pogs, which the artist dispersed throughout various interiors, public spaces, sidewalks, and sites of commerce across the centre of Toronto, with the support and assistance of @jkarah and @kvtoronto . 💙 🐍

From our recent correspondence with Jeanne (which has been one of the overwhelming joys of this undertaking):

“I could blabber at length about my wish to represent S.P.L.A.T 2025 as ephemeral, illusory, imagined, symbolic of the fragility of ethics in the culture of our current day - [‘bungled’ representation as a kind of performance by inanimate technology]. My interpretation of performance is that the performer is like the filament of an incandescent light bulb: she is burning so bright you won’t see her: what you see is The Predicament in all its luminosity.”

All images have been produced by Jeanne, manipulating her own documentation of S.P.L.A.T. , except the last one, which Kara captured of Jeanne in action. 📷

𝔅𝔦𝔬:

Jeanne Randolph is an independent intellectual whose most recent book mocking consumerism is “My Claustrophobic Happiness” (2020). Randolph claims to have invented ficto-criticism in 1983. Her performances are extemporaneous free association in response to the cultural context to which she has been invited. Since 1980 her essays, performances and books have pondered The Technological Ethos, psychoanalytic theory, contemporary Canadian art, advertising, Western philosophy and an array of phenomena such as Barbie dolls, dancing in the end zone, boxing, parking lots, mince-meat
pies, Mother Theresa, aphids etc. etc. and “nothing.“

T͜͡h͜͡a͜͡n͜͡k͜͡s͜͡ t͜͡o͜͡ @custompogs f͜͡o͜͡r͜͡ p͜͡r͜͡i͜͡n͜͡t͜͡i͜͡n͜͡g͜͡

#jeannerandolph by @know_no_kwon

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2 years ago

Logan Frances, “unthinkable event (calendar)”, 2024, installed at 1386 Queen St West, Toronto, ON.

The Wandering Calendar continues its time-marking interventions with Logan Frances’ “unthinkable event (calendar)”, an edition of seven layered posters, which echo the form of advent holiday calendars. Partly inspired by Haitian-American anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s essay “An Unthinkable History: The Haitian Revolution as a Non-Event”, Frances’ work is now on view at 1386 Queen Street West in Toronto, offering fragmentary glimpses at the urgent need for uprising, along the way to reimagining the “impossible” future.

As Logan recalls;
“In the essay, Trouillot explains that the thought that enslaved Black people in Haiti could and would revolt against French slavery and colonialism was unthinkable to the French, because they could not imagine that ‘enslaved Africans and their descendants could...envision freedom — let alone formulate strategies for gaining and securing such freedom…’ (73).”

Reflecting on the rhetoric of “good and evil” widespread in today’s media environment as well as political institutions, Frances points to how the short-circuiting binary obfuscates the lived conditions of realities created under both historical and present-day colonialism.

Many thanks to @brennan_j_kelly for installation and documentation expertise always and @kvtoronto for hosting this project.

Logan Frances (@sshheeebbaa) is a multi-disciplinary artist and designer, whose work often explores the connections between technology and the body. Born and raised in New Orleans, Logan moved to New York in 2017 and is currently based in Brooklyn. Logan works through ideas of sex, desire, power structures, and digital physicality through sound, performance, digital design, as well as materially rooted approaches to painting and drawing. taken in Queen Street West, Toronto by @know_no_kwon

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2 years ago

Bingo rarely had this much to say, but seeing her like this reminds us that she was full of surprises. She loved eating, sunbathing, chasing, napping together, and being present with her whole self. She got on her way to the next world riding the full moon at monkey hour on black sheep day, in this blue pig month of blue dragon year. We’ll miss her always.

빙고가 갑진(甲辰)년 을해(乙亥)월 계미(癸未)일 신시(申時)에 세상을 떠났습니다. 비디오에 나오는 모습처럼 말이 많은 적은 드물었지만, 우리에게 무한한 사랑으로 지난 6년간 함께해준 동무입니다. 별처럼 떳다가 혜성처럼 날아간 소중한 인연으로 저와 폴에게 겸손과 자제를 가르쳐주는 선생님이 되었습니다. taken in Point Pleasant Park Halifax by @know_no_kwon

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2 years ago

Sharing documentation of our current exhibition, which continues @franzkaka in Toronto until Nov 16. 📦

Thanks to Aryen and Kate for so graciously putting up with us and keeping things cool before, during and after install. 🥰 😎

Love to @yannnnnnwwwu for making so much time to speak with us and write so meaningfully towards this show. (Link in bio for her exhibition text). 🤗 🗑️ 💕

Was delightful to problem-solve welded zinc with SuhYeon Park s.yn.p we can’t wait to work together again💗

And everyone @yeobijin_academy from whom we have learned so much about natural lacquer techniques. 🪺🖌️

HaeAhn Paul Kwon Kajander gratefully acknowledges the support of @canada.council. 🙏🏼

Thanks to @lfdocumentation for the great shots, which comprise almost everything you see in this post. 📸 ❤️

@know_no_kwon ⏳ by @know_no_kwon

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2 years ago

Erika Kobayashi @erikakobayashiek continues the Wandering Calendar with this limited edition bookmark/poster, now available for ✨FREE✨ @artmetropole in Toronto.📚

Using fragmentation and dispersion, her work consists of 24 bookmarks that each disclose one of the different plant species previously found in the Forest of Wild Birds at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

The full set of bookmarks can be gathered and arranged to make the poster seen above, which includes a quote from Kobayashi’s novel “Trinity, Trinity, Trinity”. (This is the beginning of the revenge of the invisible.)

Erika’s longstanding exploration of radiation is suffused with metaphoric implications, but here takes the form of ominous reminder; what was “out of sight, out of mind” will come to haunt the oblivious and indifferent, often with perilous consequences.

***

Erika Kobayashi is a novelist and visual artist based in Tokyo. Kobayashi creates works that are inspired by matters invisible to the eye: time and history, family and memory, and the traces left behind.

Her novel Breakfast with Madame Curie (Shūeisha,) was shortlisted for both the Mishima and the Akutagawa Prize and she was awarded the 7th Tekken Heterotopia Literary Prize in 2020 for her novel Trinity, Trinity, Trinity (Shūeisha).

Her first novel to be published in English, Trinity, Trinity, Trinity (translated by Brian Bergstrom and published by Astra House) won the 2022-2023 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for English translation of Japanese literature. Sunrise: Radiant Stories (Astra House), is her second work of fiction published in English, and was released in 2023.

***

Many thanks to yoongyoooong for offset printing assistance in Seoul.
Thanks to @kvtoronto and Art Metropole for making Erika’s work available in Toronto.
Eternal thanks to @brennan_j_kelly for making things happen.🏃‍♂️

Wandering Calendar is a year long project organized by HaeAhn Paul Kwon Kajander. DM @know_no_kwon or me if you can’t make it to Art Met but would like us to save you a set. 💗 by @know_no_kwon

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2 years ago