Soft Ashes and Still Burn

Soft Ashes and Still Burn

2 channel video, 6-hours loop
LED Panels, charred wood
7 x 1.5 x 7 m
2026

Installation View
Vessel & Voyager, Akademie der Künste, 2026. Photo: Joanna Wilk

Installation View
Vessel & Voyager, Akademie der Künste, 2026. Photo:Miji Ih

In the spring of 2025, South Korea experienced the largest wildfire in its modern history. The flames swept through forests and mountains, devouring ecosystems and consuming centuries-old Buddhist temples. Sacred objects — Buddha statues and pagodas — were wrapped in white cloth and carried away for protection, while a monk perished defending his sanctuary. Around the same time, two individuals set themselves on fire in separate political protests. These seemingly unrelated events move along parallel yet entangled trajectories: the burning of land, heritage, and bodies; the manifestation of faith and ideology through collapse. Their extremities, pointing in different directions, recall an underlying intersection.

Derived from these circling parallels, Soft Ashes and Still Burn (2026) approaches “burning” as both an environmental and emotional condition, and as a state shaped by media. What does it mean for the world to be on fire, and for a person to respond with fire? In Tibet, where one of the longest nonviolent resistances continues, self- immolation stands as both the most radical and silenced form of protest. On the LED panel, a veiled figure in white cloth straddles protection and restraint, survival and submission, reflecting the paradox of mediated violence — both exposed and erased. Along the lower horizontal screen, a barely perceptible gradation of color shift unfolds over an extended duration, tracing the liminal zone between fire and ash.

Supports from Berlin Stipendium, Junge Akademie, Akademie der Künste

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