In the opening hours of Frieze Seoul’s preview on Wednesday (6 September), VIPs were treated to a rather rugged delicacy: jelly made with sea water from Jeju, the island in southern Korea famed for its fearless women divers. Part of an ongoing project about the divers by the Korean artist collective ikkibawiKrrr, the happening Flavor of the Sea, invited participants to ingest cubes of the gelatinous sculpture Seaweed Muk (ingredients: water, agar powder, salt and seaweed) then make a sketch of the maritime scene or memory evoked by the taste. For completing the prompt, each participant received a t-shirt—though many would probably have preferred a flute of champagne to wash down the tidal taste.
The project was the first iteration in a new partnership between Frieze and the Los Angeles-based Getty Foundation in the run-up to the 2024 edition of the programme formerly known as Pacific Standard Time (now simply PST Art), a sprawling initiative that brings hundreds of programmes connected by an overarching theme to institutions across Southern California. The 2024 edition is titled PST Art: Art & Science Collide, and ikkibawiKrrr’s Jeju island project will be featured in one of the programme’s exhibitions, at the Hammer Museum.
“Part of the beauty of the programme has been seeing how every institution interprets the theme differently,” Katherine E. Fleming, the president and chief executive of the Getty, said as VIPs swarmed the platters of saltwater jelly. “Meeting with artists and curators in Seoul this week, it feels as though there are many parallels between the scene here and in Southern California, and a lot of interest in the places where art, technology and science overlap.”