Jeong Geumhyung
APT9
Born 1980 Seoul, South Korea
Lives and works in Seoul, South Korea
Jeong Geumhyung is a dancer and choreographer whose practice began in the theatre and has recently extended to encompass installation. Her performances, which she describes as ‘duets’, feature the artist confronting monstrous ‘body-machines’. Jeong builds these by adapting various objects, from medical equipment and domestic technology, to take on human form. She sets up tense encounters suggestive of prosthesis, sexuality and agency, and the industries constructed around them. Recently she has begun to exhibit collections of her performance objects — which she refers to as her ‘collaborators’ — by arranging them on plinths under strip lighting like clinical specimens. Fitness equipment, party supplies, mannequins and medical apparatus are imbued with a bizarre anthropomorphic element and organised by unusual categories. Through her compelling performances and installations, Jeong explores the potential of human physicality, confronting anxieties and stereotypes regarding sexuality, the female body and artificial intelligence.
Geumhyung Jeong with Private Collection 2016–18 / Image courtesy: The artist / Photograph: Kiyong NAM, Fondation d'entreprise Hermes
With a background in dance, choreography and animation, Jeong Geumhyung has developed a form of puppetry using objects as extensions of her body. Her installation Private collection: Rearranged objects 2018 arranges objects in unusual categories that suggest unlikely associations. Video documentation of the performances in which these objects originally featured plays on monitors surrounding the installation.
In these performances, which she describes as ‘duets’, Jeong operates her extraordinary ‘body machines’ through physical interactions that range from gentle encounters to monstrous confrontations. She genders her interactions with her body machines, referring to them by male pronouns – ‘he’ or ‘him’ – and adopts deliberately feminine roles. Whether her relationships with these objects are overtly sensual or implicitly dangerous, Jeong is always in control.
Provocative and compelling, Jeong Geumhyung’s unique artistic world explores the politics of gender relations, commodity fetishism, bodily limits and personal agency.