Minjun Shin



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The Story of Jae-eun

2025
Jae-eun Shin’s belongings — New Year’s money pouch, photographs from Korea and Japan, summer school uniform shirt, Japanese study notes, memos, school records, etc.Painting — Family PhotographObjects collected by Minjun Shin in memory of his brother — photographs from Japan, anime CDs, etc.Monitor screening — UCC video “Jae-eun’s Story” created by Jae-eun ShinHeadphone sound
120.0 × 50.0 cm — two acrylic panel frames
27.3 × 22.0 cm — Family Photograph
4′29″ — Jae-eun’s Story




























The Story of Jae-eun is an archive composed of the belongings of my late younger brother, Shin Jae-eun, along with the materials I collected and documented after his death. On the wooden wall stands a display shelf for the archive; across from it, on a wooden bench, an old small television plays the UCC video Jae-eun’s Story, which Jae-eun himself made. Beside it, a wooden shelf holds recordings of my conversations with his friends and acquaintances, gathered after his passing.

In this exhibition, the work is categorized as an “archive” rather than painting, video, installation, or performance. Yet this archive does not so much record the life of a young man who died in his early twenties as it testifies to absence itself—making visible the impossibility of archiving. Within this “archive” are the few belongings my brother left behind, the objects I later gathered while thinking of him, the works I made in memory of him, and the conversations I shared with those who once shared warmth with him. They reveal fragments of his heart and his world, but do not reach the reason for his death. Instead, they lay bare his absence all the more clearly. Still, throughout the exhibition, Jae-eun remains present in this room, absent though he is. Here, we meet him faint yet vivid, and encounter the society entangled in his life.


Note
After my brother’s funeral, at my mother’s request, I burned his belongings—leaving almost nothing to me. At the time I did not realize that burning them was also erasing the traces that proved his life, the mediations that connected us. That act remains with me as regret.

With the dead, no new memories can be made. All I can do is gather the fragments left in halted time, chew over them, hold onto fading memories, and call them back again. That is why I continue to collect new objects in remembrance of him, or transform them into works, so that I may keep thinking of him. I repeat this incomplete attempt. For those left behind, even this is a precious form of memory.



Archive List of The Story of Jae-eun
  • Photographs
    • Jae-eun as a child in a baby walker
    • The first photo taken with his first Polaroid camera
    • With Friends during their visit to Japan(Where Jae-eun was working for Working Holiday in)
    • With Hanul(Who was collegue in Japan during Working Holiday time)
    • High school graduation photo placed at his columbarium by his friend Chang-yeon Yoo
    • At Sapporo Station, taken by friends
    • At Sapporo Station, Minjun Shin photographed in the same pose and composition as Jae-eun
    • Photo with a note Minjun sent to Jae-eun’s Japanese friends after his death

  • Documents
    • Rental contract for Jae-eun’s apartment
    • Japanese vocabulary notebook he used before leaving for Japan
    • Mandal-art chart filled out at a sales company workshop after returning from Japan written by Jae-eun
    • Memo: “9 body languages that make a confident day” written by Jae-eun
    • Future plans written by Jae-eun
    • Notes for street NGO membership recruitment written by Jae-eun
    • Middle school student record of him
    • High school student record of him

  • Drawings / Paintings
    • Minjun Shin, Family Photograph, acrylic on canvas, 27.3 × 22.0 cm, 2017
    • Drawing by Jae-eun, ballpoint pen on memo paper, 14.8 × 22.0 cm, 2020
    • Fragment with Jae-eun’s drawing, watercolor on wood, 10 × 22.0 cm, date unknown

  • Objects
    • Bokjumeoni given at Jae-eun’s birth
    • Middle school uniform
    • Weathering with You brochure he carried
    • Anime soundtrack CDs (Makoto Shinkai’s disaster trilogy: Your Name, Weathering with You, Suzume) purchased by Minjun in remembrance
    • MagiRanger figure purchased by Minjun in remembrance
    • Aurora ship boarding ticket, Memanbetsu, Hokkaido
    • Pizzeria T coaster, Noboribetsu, Hokkaido
    • Ainu carving souvenir, Lake Akan National Park, Hokkaido
    • Rice purchased near Cape Chiku, Hokkaido, for memorial rites

  • Sound
    • Interview with Gu-ik Song (third-year high school homeroom teacher), 1′32″, 2024
    • Interview with Jong-beom Lee and Yeji Kim (high school friends), 3′45″, 2024
    • Interview with Je-hyun Kang (high school friend), 3′22″, 2024
    • Interview with Jae-hyun Kim (second-year high school homeroom teacher), 3′23″, 2024
    • Conversation with Nanako(Japanese collegue), 1′27″, 2023
    • Conversation with Misato(Japanese collegue), 3′23″, 2023
    • Conversation with Hanul Lee(Collegue in japan), 3′04″, 2024
    • Interview with Jung-shin Yang (mother), 4′56″, 2024
    • Conversation between Misato and Minjun Shin (at Muroran Observatory), 2′28″, 2023

  • Other
    • Jae-eun Shin, Jae-eun’s Story, HD, stereo, 4′29″, 2014