Paper, ink, wood, paint
216 x 24 x 48 in
548.6 x 60.9 x 122.0 cm
2001
Identification Please exhibited at Ssamzie Space, Seoul, South Korea, 2001
For Crossing Parallels, an exhibition at Ssamzie Space in Seoul, South Korea, curated by Kim Hong-hee and Lance Fung, New York-based artist Richard Humann collaborated with Seoul-based artist Meehy Lee on Identification Please. The project examined the exchange of identity and information through the social ritual of exchanging name cards, a familiar practice in Korean and broader Asian business and social culture.
Over several weeks, Humann and Lee moved through Seoul, distributing their own name cards to passers-by and receiving cards in return. When someone offered a card, the artists recorded their immediate impressions and observations about the individual. They later erased each person’s name and replaced it with these first impressions and perceived attributes, transforming a conventional marker of identity into a record of how that identity was interpreted by others.
Using hundreds of collected cards, the artists constructed a miniature city and village, with the cards serving as building blocks. Information originally exchanged between individuals became the physical material of a collective environment. Each card carried a fragment of a human encounter, while the assembled structures suggested a society built from the perceptions, assumptions, and impressions people form of one another.
Identification Please considers the tension between how we identify ourselves and how others identify us. A name card is intended to communicate specific information, yet the artists’ intervention replaces an established identity with a subjective interpretation. The act acknowledges the social conventions that govern introductions while revealing how quickly personal judgments can emerge from brief encounters.
By transforming these exchanges into an architectural landscape, Humann and Lee extend individual interactions into a collective portrait of society. The resulting city reflects how information moves between people, how identities are continually interpreted, and how our perceptions shape the social structures we inhabit. Identification Please suggests that identity is never simply given; it is also constructed through the ongoing exchange between the image we project and the impressions others receive.
Identification Please exhibited at Ssamzie Space, Seoul, South Korea, 2001
Identification Please exhibited at Ssamzie Space, Seoul, South Korea, 2001
Meehye Lee and Richard Humann in Seoul, South Korea, 2001
Meehye Lee and Richard Humann in Seoul, South Korea, 2001
Photo credits: Richard Humann Studio