The Wapping Project, London
Role
Audio Visual Installer
Overview
The exhibition SeaWomen (26 May – 8 July 2012) presented a new body of work by Mikhail Karikis focusing on a community of female sea workers living on the North Pacific island of Jeju – a jagged patch of black volcanic rock between South Korea, Japan and China. A sound installation, a film and a series of watercolours depict the working women called haenyeo(sea-women), who dive to great depths with no oxygen supply to catch seafood, collect seaweed and find pearls. This ancient female profession is now on the verge of disappearance but used to be the dominant economic force on the island until the 1970s, establishing a matriarchal system in an otherwise male-dominated Confucian society.
In the sound installation, Karikis created an immersive experience with recordings of work songs, communal activities and the striking noises of the divers’ traditional breathing technique (sumbisori). At once alarming and joyous, the sumbisori punctuates each dive like a spontaneous vocal firework with a high-pitched breathy shriek, followed by a series of wheezing and grunting calls. Often mistaken for noises produced by dolphins, this unique breathing technique is a transgenerational skill transmitted from one woman to another when a new haenyeo begins her training at the age of eight.
