lecture performance and installation, 2025
the 38th transmediale commission:
(near) near but — far, transmediale, Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin
Photo: Laura Fiorio
(near) near but — far, transmediale, Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin
Photo: Laura Fiorio
Acts of Proximity No. 01: Sleepless Skies
Installation, 2025
3D Printed Sheep, Weather Balloon
Since May 2024, North Korea has sent thousands of balloons carrying parcels of waste – including Hello Kitty merchandise, e-waste, cigarette butts, and soil with traces of human faeces – over the border to the Republic of Korea. While politicians in Seoul declare the balloons an act of war, the installation uses the playful form of the primary object in question, the balloon, to explore the ambiguity of the medium and its message.
Photo: Laura Fiorio
Acts of Proximity No. 02: Where Have All the Sheep Gone?
Lecture Performance, 2025
Yoo portrays a streamer who regularly broadcasts online to explore forms of ‘non-verbal dialogue’ between South and North Korea, in the process revealing the nonsensical narrative of a love-hate relationship.
Photo: Laura Fiorio
sound-video installation, HD, stereo, color, 12:12min., 2024
Installation view / Open Studio Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 2024
Photo: Stephanie Walk
Photo: Stephanie Walk
The project Bune imagines the Bune mask(부네탈, Bune-tal), which traditionally symbolises a street woman or courtesan in Korean folk theatre, transformed into a symbol of near-future activism representing the voices of micro-tasking machine-learning workers. While deliberately failing in the role of a satirical “performance” or a political “manifesto”, the human-AI voice serves as feedback on the workers’ contributions. Structured into four acts, the sound work interspersed between the performances reconstructs interludes by extracting only the background noise from dozens of recorded voice data – noise that workers are tasked with filtering out.
Commissioned by Sound Art Korea, Altspace LOOP Seoul
experimental doc., HD, surround 5.1, color and B&W, 18min., 2023
installation, stainless steel mirror, 3800 x 1350, 2025
Installation view / Vision and Perspective, Sungkok Art Museum, Seoul, 2025
installation commission: Busan Museum of Art
Photo: Cho Youngha
installation commission: Busan Museum of Art
Photo: Cho Youngha
Anatomy Class (Chap.2) weaves recollections of three individuals who underwent a frog dissection experiment during their youth in a science class. Simultaneously, it juxtaposes the stories with the archival images of Unit 731, creating the dissonance between contexts and exploring nature of violence that arises from such arbitrary ‘dissection of images’.
Anatomy Class Chap2, excerpt, 1min
*
Supports from Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe
Work Stipends of Künstlerinnenprogramm Film/Video and Research Stipends of Fine Arts
Arko Art Council Korea
single channel video, HD, stereo, color, 9’15’’, 2023
installation, 2025
Installation view <We may be separated like islands, but,>, Daegu Art Factory, South Korea, 2025
Photo: Soo-whan Park
Photo: Soo-whan Park
A mystical being emerges from the depths of the river and sea, traversing the monumental landscapes of the city. In response to a controversial proposal by a far-right politician advocating for the privatization of the sea and whales under the guise of 'saving' them, the 'Tanu' project manifests slow resistance against extractivism and potential ecocide.
Tanu is re-imagined figure inspired by spiritual rite of Selk’nam, an indigenous group from southern Patagonia(Tierra del Fuego). They were known to deeply connect with cetaceans, especially because finding a stranded whale conveys their temporary settlement and therefore a new generation. They are now considered extinct as a tribe, due to gold mining and the excessive farming in the 20th Century which led to genocide of the Selk'nam.
Tanu's path eventually intersects with Malón de la Paz (Peace Incursion), an indigenous sit-in protest group from northwestern Argentina, Jujuy and Salta. This region is marked by large-scale lithium mining operations that have inflicted severe environmental contamination. Their 77 years of fight to reclaim their land continues with the spirit of Pachamama.
In the installation, the narrative rewinds through five posters, portraying Tanu's emergence as if it were an activist leaflet, yet revealing their binary points. The sixth poster takes inspiration from a poem by Kim Hyesoon (South Korea, 1955), turning a political voice into an imaginative space, exploring spheres between art and activism.
Installation view <We may be separated like islands, but,>, Daegu Art Factory, South Korea, 2025
Photo: Soo-whan Park
Photo: Soo-whan Park
The Sea is Not Private
6 poster series, digital print, 841 x 1189, 2023-2025
1. EL MAR NO ES PRIVADO 2. EL MAR NO ES PÚBLICO 3. LA TIERRA NO ES PRIVADA 4. LA TIERRA NO ES PÚBLICA 5. EL ESPACIO NO ES PRIVADO 6. ¿Alrededor de quién va a girar la luna cuando ya no esté la tierra?
1. The Sea is Not Private 2. The Sea is Not Public 3. The Land is Not Private 4. The Land is Not Public 5. The Space is Not Private 6. Who will the Moon circle When the Earth dies?
1. 바다는 사유물이 아니다 2. 바다는 공공의 것이 아니다 3. 땅은 사유물이 아니다 4. 땅은 공공의 것이 아니다 5. 우주는 사유물이 아니다 6. 지구가 죽으면 달은 누굴 돌지?
*The project is realized within the international residency program supported by Arko Art Council Korea, and Projecto ACE, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Installation, 2022
Berlin Art Prize, Acud Galerie, Berlin
Hana Yoo’s (Busan, South Korea) overarching thesis, questions the complex power system of hierarchical positions through storytelling. This interest places the artist’s practice in a denunciatory tone of capitalist behaviors, underlying in our everyday political and social realities. Through two video works, the exhibition establishes itself as a provocation: What defines our identity and how is it being manipulated? If the eyes are a mirror to your soul, an opposite picture is painted if you can’t look in someone’s eyes. By dissolving the human aspect, pointing it towards a more machinal state, oppressive behaviors and tools become easier to maintain in a well sealed environment.
Bare Life (2021), a loosely structured narrative film, introduces “the place” through a vague description of a prison and a first hand experience of an escape story. The narrator is portrayed anonymously, with a cloth masking their face, a sign which reflects the extent of the prisoner's effects as a refugee and victim. In parallel, the testimony is mixed with non sequential archival footage. First amateur videos of air gun demonstrations, used by pest controllers and secondly technical videos of testing labs which use AI technology in order to detect pain in rats. The obscure pairing between the rat and the refugee demonstrates an ironic but critical tone which examines their possible connection nevertheless set in different reality spheres.
Comparatively, Your freedom song (2022) is a satirical representation of a popular Korean youtuber following her role as a patriotic figure of South Korean political values. As an escapee of “the place”, the online star triggers a sense of tension while setting side to side the military and strategic capacities of both countries. In between, the artist combines clips from the same gun demonstration footage in its preparation stage, projecting the video to an eerie sense of agitated suspense. This capitalist and western format of “show and tell” excuses and allows war and violence to be accessible to a large range of online users. The characters repetitively present the same arguments in extreme public displays, thus creating a vertigo sensation between the objectification of such sensitive subjects which is then overcome with social mechanisms of approval such as likes, views and comments. By the end, the exhibition should be seen as a continuous loop of anxiety and discomfort, where both realities are complemented and differing simultaneously: a double sided representation of the present context in South Korea.
Curatorial Text: Francisca Portugal / Edit: Berlin Art Prize
Your Freedom Song
4 channel video, HD, color, stereo, 6’40’’, 2022
Your freedom song, still, 2022
Your freedom song, installation view
All Photos: Sandra Gramm, Courtesy of the Berlin Art Prize
All Photos: Sandra Gramm, Courtesy of the Berlin Art Prize