Jaeyeon Yoo
“My childhood was surrounded by many fairy tales, Disney videos, and wonderings.”
Interview by Rochelle Roberts
Could you tell us a bit about yourselves and your background? Where did you study?
I am a Korean artist based in London. I was born in Seoul in the middle of summer when the 88 Seoul Olympics were held. At that time, Korean society was very excited, and I was told that the roots of cultural diversity were beginning. Between then and 1993, I lived in different places in the U.S. I clearly remember the day when I first went to Kindergarten in Cincinnati. I was three years old and did not know a word of English which made me a perfect outsider. It was probably the first time I felt alienated. As time passed, I gradually adjusted to that place, and then, when I came back to Korea, I had to change again. It seems to me that I realised quite early that it was so challenging to belong perfectly anywhere. When I was a kid, I spent most of the time writing and drawing storybooks, imagining my world on sketchbooks. The world I imagined was a world that I could not see anywhere else, and painting meant a lot to me from that age. I think a lot of the sensibility of childhood that I built up at that time is also revealed in my current practice. I came to London in 2012. I received my M.A. in Painting from the Royal College of Art, UK in 2014. Before this, I completed my BFA in Painting from Ewha Women’s University, South Korea.
Can you speak a bit about the influence of fairy tales on your work and how you reflect these stories' darker undertones, for instance, in work like Roadkill?
I recall my childhood was surrounded by many fairy tales, Disney videos, and wonderings. I started to watch videos when I could not even say a proper word. I think people who spent their childhood in the late '80s and early '90s are just like me; they pretty much got influenced by various kinds of mass media images such as Disney animation and Japanese manga culture. [Project Roadkill] is the work I made in 2011 and is also one of the works influenced by a Disney character, Snow White. I made a quilted blanket in the shape of crying Snow White and installed the blanket all over the highway in Seoul and archived the process with photography. At that time, I was interested in creating stories that had Kafkaesque imaginations. [Project Roadkill] is based on the self-made tale of Snow White being hit by a car and turned into a flat blanket as soon as she came out into the real world. I tried to show the point of conflict between reality, the virtual world, and fantasy through this work. And there was a rare feeling from the experience of making and installing this fictional object in our physical space. I think the sentiment I felt during this project was unforgettable, crossing the point of the clash between reality and fantasy, a question I essentially wanted to ask.
Moaning Desert, 2019
At the fruit garden, 2019
Black to Blue, 2019
Can you speak about how you became interested in performance art and what inspires or influences the work you make in this medium?
I became interested in performance art when I first confronted the performance by artist Haegue Yang in Tate Modern’s Tanks in 2012. I could see that the artist-made constructed metal structures moved around on wheels. There was a light projection, triggered by the audience's use of a drum-kit and microphone. Interaction with moving sculpture and the spontaneous interplay between sound and performance seems so interesting to me. After seeing that work, my interest in performing sculptures grew, and I was inspired by such methodology to create my work [Wounded Trampoline (2014)]. This work is the interaction performative sculpture using a trampoline painted like a bruise. I installed the trampoline in various locations around London to observe how spectators could interact with this project. Every time I watch people jump on the trampoline, I realised that somehow people are having fun and screaming, laughing when they are jumping, no matter what image the trampoline mat contains. I used the painted trampoline as a performative sculpture to begin thinking about the physical engagement of my work and asking participants to use the object to find a more intimate relationship between the thing as an artwork and an emotional sense of their past relationships.
I am interested in performance art within the context of contemporary art and arts performed on stages, such as musicals, operas, and plays. Definitely, there is the magic of temporality in that field with a different charm than paintings in the sense of translating time. I think those interests seem to have been projected into my current installation works, which are part of my “piece-painting” series, [Moaning Desert (2019)] and [Moonlight Punch (2018)]. The piece-painting series show fleeting imagery from daily life and those pieces of cut-out woods are based on my nighttime drawings. It is an assemblage of lots of individual pieces of marker drawings, collected from my drawing books. I came to imagine the appearance of little graffiti floating and growing in real physical space.
Can you tell us about the way you work with painting and film, and how these two mediums sometimes fuse to make one work, as in Night Skater?
[Night Skater] is the oil painting animation I made in 2019. I made this animation by erasing and overpainting oil paints on a single canvas. I took a picture every time I made new traces with the brush to make a stop motion animation. When I work alone in my studio, I watch the paintings on the canvas change from time to time. This process of change is usually spontaneous, accidental, and sometimes planned. I imagined the process of creating a narrative with these behind the scenes movement on the canvas. I captured the movement of backgrounds on a single canvas while putting some moving objects on it using tracing papers and oil paints. The method of making this animation was a basic and simple technique, however, through that process, I was able to watch the magical transition that painting itself has.
What do you hope viewers will gain from experiencing your work in the flesh, at exhibitions and displays?
I think my practice has widely opened arms to absorb the viewer's point of view. I usually do not want to convey a particular message or narrative through my work. I want my viewers to be reminded of their thoughts and feel emotions by looking at my artworks and sometimes deeply reminisce about their memories. Whenever I can have a short conversation with my viewers, I discover new perspectives in their interpretations, realise different sensitivity, and sometimes share similar feelings. I am very touched by every moment when the viewers resonate deeply with my work.
Night Skater, 2019
Ice-cream Eater, 2019
Strolling Together, 2019
Moonlight Punch 2018, Noblesse Collection
What artwork have you seen recently that has resonated with you?
During the first lockdown in London, I was struggling due to the isolated situation. It was quite hard to admit that there is nowhere to go to see the physical artworks. When the second lockdown started, I went to Tate Britain to look at some paintings to refresh myself and prepare for the lack of images during the upcoming second lockdown. I was passing by many different paintings made by artists in 13C-20C, and surprisingly, every single painting that caught my eyes was related to the image of ‘Deluge’ and ‘Fairy’. Especially, I was fascinated by the painting titled “The Deluge” by Winifred Knights. Perhaps I felt that this painting has a similar emotion that coincides with the current situation of the age of Covid19. From that day, I became more interested in how modern people’s visual perception has been affected by this pandemic era.
Is there anything new and exciting in the pipeline you would like to tell us about?
Last year was a very rough time for most people in the world. The pandemic has heavily changed our lives, and many artists struggled. I am in the process of developing a new idea about how my practice has been influenced by these social phenomena and how people’s perception has been affected by that. Currently, I am preparing my next solo exhibition, which will be held in Seoul this summer. Despite this unpredictable era, working in the studio all day is always exciting for me. I believe I can endure it well, just as everyone else also strives through these difficult times.
All images are courtesy of the artist
Date of publication: 21/01/21
