Statement
My prints, videos, and installations feature mythical creatures: non-human proxies that simulate the human experience. Inspired by nature and literature, I reinterpret animal and plant characteristics and anatomical images to create virtual creatures.
My work leaves socio-political commentary on various elements of the post-colonial, contemporary landscape through the speculative world of anthropomorphic creatures. It invites viewers to speculative time-space, a virtual world of imaginary beings that allows us to examine the questions we face from a distance and recontextualize history from individuals' perspectives.
Statement (2021)
[ENG]
How can we locate ourselves differently, beyond the confines of time and place? Is it possible to escape the histories and memories that keep us trapped in our insurmountable differences?
My prints, videos, and installations feature mythical creatures with human characteristics, non-human proxies that simulate the human experience. They may grow, move, speak in anthropomorphic ways, but they have intensely fluid relationships to the grounds from which they emerge.
Much of my work depicts sensory organs—eyes, nerves, muscles, skin—in ways that are visceral and strange. The body is where we encounter the world. It is where we hold traumas, both personal and intergenerational, that shape the stories that make us who we are. But nothing is fixed in this landscape. Our cellular and perceptual states are fluid and changeable. My work aims to heighten, reimagine, and emphasize the imaginative possibilities of this space. These sensory representations invite new ways of thinking and feeling, the encounter between bodies and collective identities.
[KOR]
극복할 수 없어 보이는 한계에 우리를 갇히게 하는 역사와 기억으로부터 탈출하는 것이 가능할까? 나의 작업은 유형화된 사회적 관념과 통제된 역사에 의해 결론지어 질 수 없는 현재를 기념하고 각 개인의 신체적, 사회적 경험이 다름을 강조하고 긍정하기 위한 연대의 매개물을 만들어내는 과정이다.
나의 판화, 애니메이션 그리고 설치 작업들은 인간의 특징을 가지며 인간의 경험을 모방하는 비인간 대리인인 가상의 생물들을 묘사한다. 그들은 가상의 세계 속에서 성장하고, 움직이고, 의인화되어 세계 속에서의 자신의 경험을 이야기 하기도 한다. 하지만 그 가상의 생명체들이 탄생하는 세계 속에서 생명체들은 서로 연결되어 매우 유동적인 관계를 가지고 있다.
나의 작품 대부분은 눈, 신경, 피부 등 감각 기관의 이미지를 재구성하여 표현한다. 우리의 신체는 우리가 세계를 감각하는 장소이다. 이와 동시에 현재를 살아가는 우리의 신체는 개인적이거나 세대적인 트라우마를 간직한 장소이다. 그러나 내가 신체의 이미지를 이용해 재구성해내는 풍경에는 한계를 만들어내는 아무 사회문화적 단서도 정해져 있지 않다. 이 가상의 장소는 우리의 세포와 지각 상태가 매우 동적이며 변화 할 수 있다는 믿음을 전제로 하는 장소이다. 나의 작업은 이러한 공간을 상상하고 구성 하여 과거의 한계를 넘어 현재의 우리가 가진 잠재력을 강조하는 것을 목표로 한다. 이러한 공간은 새로운 방식의 사고를 통해 개인을 자주적인 방식으로 그들 집단의 정체성과 마주하게 하는 장소를 마련한다.
Statement (2020)
[ENG]
As we walk through the reality of the world, at the same time, like shadows, we walk into the reality of ourselves. Interestingly, we perceive these two realities through a body that appeared 40,000 years ago, creating various virtual places to mediate between ourselves and the world. Each individual relies on his or her sensory organs to experience a personal reality and form themselves. Landscape series (2016-2017), depicting the scenes of a fictional creature evolving through death in an unknown world, metaphorically shows the relationship between the physical entity "I" and the world.
As we walk through the reality of the world, at the same time, like shadows, we walk into the reality of ourselves. Interestingly, we perceive these two realities through a body that appeared 40,000 years ago, creating various virtual places to mediate between ourselves and the world. Each individual relies on his or her sensory organs to experience a personal reality and form themselves. Landscape series (2016-2017), depicting the scenes of a fictional creature evolving through death in an unknown world, metaphorically shows the relationship between the physical entity "I" and the world.
On the other hand, the body is a political place where different histories breed parasites named culture, in a gap between the world and the individual. The interesting point is that these gaps are shaped differently from perceptible reality, creating a new system of connecting individuals and the world. Such a system goes beyond the limits of the sensory organs' perceptible range. It goes further from personal reality, becoming an efficient and effective mediator between the world and many individuals. And the mediator itself becomes the world again and surrounds the individual. For example, Theater (2019) is a work that explores the expression of Baroque art. It visualizes the value that this collective imagination reproduces by investigating how artificial expression mediated the authentic experience of the individual and cultural world.
Our bodies, living in the present in 2020, which suppose to be the site of an unknown world, are under the control of the past 100 years. Such domination becomes a culture, and the efforts to overthrow it again become a culture. Our bodies, where various cultures and histories are located, are carved into many parts and become geopolitical markers. And this mark reproduces misfortune or privilege. In this environment, what history do we each internalize? What such imaginations will save a person's life beyond the continuing history by integrating the experiences? Under these questions, I summon the imaginary proxy to simulate our life circumstances. In my work, The Hound of the Baskervilles (2018), the Hound is a metaphor for transgenerational trauma. Ceaselessly connecting scenes express an infinite loop of precarious life, the life within our suspended future.
Such simulation functions as a twilight zone where we can observe and contemplate the misfortunes of our lives without stigmatizing or traumatizing them. This manifestation of the middle area itself becomes a clue to look back on our environment. Hence, it invites the viewer to face the blind spots of the world they are related. Riddle (2020), interweaved with the Sphinx riddle, presents an image of the macroscopic conception that constitutes the present world, such as the transfer of culture, migration, and the fantasy about outer space. But further from this, which insightful moment can be experienced and make us critical about perceiving the boundaries of an independent "me" with the world continuing before my existence?
According to Boris Groys, since the life experience is defined by the values of the culture in which we live, it becomes genuine and original only as an artifact purified from all these values. My work aims to observe the importance of aesthetic experience in a culturally contextualized reality and provide a place to encounter and recontextualize history from individuals' perspectives.
[KOR]
우리는 세상의 현실을 경험함과 동시에 마치 그림자처럼, 한결 같은 걸음으로 우리 몸의, 자아의 현실로 걸어간다. 우리는 4만년 전에 나타난 몸을 통해 이 두 가지 현실을 인식하고, 우리 자신과 실재하는 현실 사이를 중재하는 다양한 심리적 장소를 만들어낸다. 사람들은 각자 자신의 물리적 감각기관에 의존하여 개인적 현실을 경험하고 그 기억을 토대로 자신을 형성해나간다. 미지의 세계에서 죽음을 통해 진화하는 가상의 생명체의 모습을 그린 Landscape 연작 (2016 ~2018)은 물리적인 존재인 ‘나’와 세상의 관계를 은유적으로 보여준다.