ECOLOGY: DIALOGUE ON CIRCULATIONS DIALOGUE 1 "LA VITA NUOVA" JAEEUN CHOI October 14, 2023 (Saturday) - January 28, 2024 (Sunday) "La Vita Nuova (The New Life)" is an exhibition that looks back on the 40-year practice of Jaeeun Choi (born in Seoul, Korea in 1953), an artist who has continued to engage in dialogue with the environment and nature. Choi encountered ikebana (Japanese flower arrangement) when she came to Japan in 1976, and after studying under Hiroshi Teshigahara, the third generation head of the Sogetsu school, she began creating art works in the 1980s. This exhibition introduces Choi's current projects and new works, which she continues as a process of reconstructing an ideal coexistence with nature while facing the realities of the natural ecosystem related to survival. The exhibition features projects such as the "World Underground Project," in which washi paper was buried in seven countries around the world and unearthed after a period of time, and the "Dreaming of Earth Project," which envisions the ecosystem realized through self-organization in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that separates the Korean Peninsula into North and South, and attempts to restore the forest. In addition, through new works such as "White Death," which uses white coral, and "Poet's Atelier," which meditatively chronicles the gaze at plants that exist in our daily lives but disappear without even knowing their names, the exhibition quietly approaches the aspects of the urgent environmental crisis. Within the range of warnings of emergencies and quiet poetry, the violence and beauty inherent in life, the exhibition explores the possibility of coexistence with nature and seeks hope. While reflecting the awareness of the times, her unique activities based on deep insight reduce universal questions to life-size dialogues, involving many people. It can be said that it is the practice of ecology itself, which starts from the energy of a single artist and shakes the relationships between things, nature, and people.