Anne Duk Hee Jordan is a Korean-German artist, born in Korea in 1978. She lives and works in Berlin, Germany.
Early life and education
, an orphan from Korea, was adopted by a German couple at the age of four, and grew up in a small village in West Germany. She was trained as a rescue diver, deep sea diver, and free diver. She was also trained as an occupational therapist, specializing in Kinaesthetics. She started her art education at 27, when she enrolled at the Berlin Weissensee. Disappointed by the program after several of her professors left the school, she joined Olafur Eliason’s in 2012 as a master student.
Career
Anne Duk Hee Jordan's background shaped her interests in art, science, and philosophy. Her work often speaks of issues of migration, identity, and social spaces, using natural or biological processes as metaphors. Her installations are meticulously researched, and she often uses humor to get her point across. She uses both living and dead materials, at times constructing machines that can mirror organisms, and creates a dialogue between art and science, her identity and social systems.
Major works
Mein Deutsches Herz / My German Heart : identifying herself with the ubiquitous potato in Germany the artist installed a small motor in a gutted potato, which was painted red, animating it like a beating heart. The work was a metaphor for her life: she comes from a place she cannot remember, and now lives in a "destination she does not know".
Water Me / Eat Me : a self-sustained laboratory, where the artists not only "fed" a potato field with her own blood thereby mixing their DNA, but where the potatoes also acted as a source of energy for watering the plants, through a series of wires attached to copper and zinc plates, placed inside the potatoes.
Metrotopie : Anne Duk Hee Jordan collaborated with , which took a subway car filled with living plants from all over the world that traveled across Berlin. The train car acted as a symbol of energy, recalling the Chinese meridian system.
Lost Princess of Mongolia, Icarus : in this video installation, the artist interweaves images of herself, dressed in traditional Mongolian dress wandering the streets of Berlin, with images of the artist preparing food. Dealing with issues of identity, the video ends with Anne throwing the potato into a river, symbolizing her return to her origin across the ocean.
Ziggy and the Starfish—How one becomes One with a Fish : the artist investigates the sexuality of marine life, and the effect of climate change on its adapting and changing sexual behavior.
Into The Wild : dinner parties where up to 100 guests eat seasonal plants that grow in the city of Berlin. No utensils are provided and the table itself is edible.
‘’ I travelled 1.8 million Years to be With You” : public sculpture for Beaufort Triennial, Ostend, Belgium. The work shows a huge boulder stone seemingly hanging in a fishing net in between two buoys.
Anne Duk Hee Jordan received first place in 2005 for her poetry in the Brentano Literature Contest. Her work was compiled in the in 2008 and 2012. In 2011, she received a science and art grant from . She was an artist in residence at in Taiwan in 2008, at the in New York City in 2012–13, and at " in 2016. In 2018, her work was included in the , and the . She was nominated for the in 2019 and is in 2020 nominated for the Kunstpreis der Böttcherstrasse in Bremen.The “Prize of the Böttcherstraße in Bremen” is among the leading and highest awards in the field of contemporary art in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Press and publications
Anne Duk Hee Jordan was recently featured in Sculpture magazine, and was interviewed in by Chrischa Oswald. Her work was reviewed by Alison Hugill for . Her work was mentioned in ArtForum, as part of the Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art. She contributed to Olafur Eliasson's Take Your Time 5 kitchen book and The Kitchen.
