The special exhibition “Platypus and Unicorn” at Boan1942 (Boan Inn, Tongui-dong) focuses on life forms that raise doubts about the human classification system. Who is the being that calls for change in the rigid categories that humans have established between life forms, such as species and species, male and female? This exhibition seeks to delve into the gap where the boundaries of classification become unclear and encounter the existence beyond it, thereby drawing a flexible system based on contact and connection.

The creatures drawn on cave walls by our distant ancestors and named by Adam in the Bible were organized into categories of species like a pharmacy drawer after extensive observation since the advent of taxonomy. Under this system, the species drawn as if they would remain forever took root in the shape of a tree through Charles Darwin, and they have numerous branches that constantly branch out and sometimes break off due to extinction. Then, by paying attention to the very small units of life that were excluded under the name of 'chaos', the base of the giant tree was divided into only three branches: archaea, bacteria, and eukaryotes. Recent research is questioning the iconography of the tree itself by focusing on the movement of genes that transcend distances between species. In this way, our classification system is a process of deconstruction and reconstruction that is repeated as we encounter various beings and make adjustments.

The sense that humans can recognize and distinguish between living things has clearly played an essential role in survival. However, this sense often turns into an attitude of 'fixing' life to imperfect categories and forms of humans, and overlooks its dynamism and variability. In a poorly constructed hierarchy, some beings are banished to extinction. Therefore, we must constantly check what level the boundaries of classification give to the diversity of life and what beings they deny.

The four artists participating in the exhibition question the human attitude of categorizing life through encounters with different life forms. Artist Kim Hyo-jin captures the dynamic gestures of survival that static classifications such as plants and animals overlook on canvas. The artist focuses on the various ways in which life preserves itself and draws an imaginary ecosystem that transcends existing hierarchies. Artist Jeong Hye-jeong uses barnacles that mix inside and outside as “passages” to summon the various ecological spaces and times that she connects by drifting attached to other bodies. The traces spread out in the exhibition hall become the cornerstone for encountering the sticky world beyond the body classified as “barnacles.” Artist Baek Jeong-gi points out the point where the distinction between species becomes ambiguous by calling various species as one water. The water that moves through dozens of names makes us sense that life flows and circulates beyond the boundaries of the body. Writer Erin Johnson added love letters exchanged between biologist Rachel Carson and her same-sex lover Dorothy Freeman to a scene of studying plants with fluid sexual expression. Plants whose reproductive methods are different for each individual and therefore difficult to classify or conclude, scholars who study and preserve these plants, and the regretful words of love of a biologist facing death are mixed together to sing of the possibility of 'namelessness.' In this way, the participating writers capture the turning point from the boundary of classification to connection.

Ecology writer David Quammen says that “the walls of boundaries that classify life are porous, like Gore-Tex or woven fabric.”1) We recognize that the boundaries we build as humans are not thick walls but flexible “membranes,” and we meet and mingle with each other by penetrating them like liquid. When we focus on recognizing and encountering rather than classifying existence, we can see coexistence, not loss and renewal resulting from belonging and exclusion. In this way, old trees are covered with spider webs, and you and I are tangled messily. Life is the movement of moving through these spider webs and reaching each other.

Erin Johnson works with concepts of collectivity, dissent, and queer identity. She delves into the idea that categorizing systems, including science, are objective and infallible—that certain lives are superior to others, and that society is immune to them—while calmly intersecting with the invisible ideology of white supremacy. Cherishing the experience of collective “togetherness,” the artist does not dictate how we should look at her work, but simply evokes communal experiences by showing intimately connected bodies in a soft and natural way. Her works, which loosely hold objects, temporarily gather them, and then allow them to flow freely, are like “porous epidermis.”