Archive

Dissociative Identity


Dissociative Identity II

XR Installation, Theater an der Ruhr, Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany, 2024
Animation: Jin-A Lee, Hojin LEE
Sound: Hojin LEE
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A continuation and expansion of the D.I universe, D.I II deepens the exploration of internal multiplicity. New characters emerge, each occupying their own psychic and emotional space. Their co-presence in the XR environment reflects the instability and coexistence at the heart of dissociative experience.


In the Head

XR Installation, Cologne, Germany, 2024
Animation: Jin-A Lee, Hojin LEE
Sound: Hojin LEE
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This intimate and emotionally charged work links dissociative identity with early childhood trauma. Before entering the XR environment—an immersive rendering of a dissociative inner world—visitors read excerpts from a fictionalized survivor’s diary. The installation is surrounded by four massive mirrors that extend the space and distort visual perception, heightening the confusion between what is real and what is simulated. The experience culminates in a space for reflection—on attachment, memory, survival, and the multiplicity of the self.

Dissociative Identity I

XR Installation, Tanzhaus NRW, Düsseldorf, Germany, 2024
Animation: Claude Wear, Jiwoo Kim, Hojin LEE
Sound: Hojin LEE
Technical Support: Yoonah Song
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The first chapter introduces the audience to a world where multiple identities share a single space. Fragmented memories, layered voiceovers, and shifting perspectives challenge the boundaries between observer and participant, self and other.

Characters

XR Installation & Single-channel videos, Cologne, Germany, 2023
Animation: Claude Wear, Jiwoo Kim, Hojin LEE
Sound: Hojin LEE
Technical Support: Tadaomi Kageyama
Watch XR documentation


Characters gives internal selves a space to exist both independently and relationally. The installation features a shared XR environment inhabited by multiple identities, as well as two accompanying single-channel video works—Thread LEE and Face KIM—which offer focused portraits of two distinct selves.

In the XR space, real and virtual mirrors confront the viewer with layered reflections of the self and others. Meanwhile, the animations explore the emotional logic of these characters in poetic, symbolic form.

    Thread LEE
    Single-channel video, 3min 5sec, 2023  
Animation: Hojin LEE
Sound: Ting Chun Liu

Thread LEE cannot stop crying. Her tears form threads—delicate yet unending. As they accumulate, they overwhelm her, forcing her to find a way to process them in her own instinctive, bodily language.

    Face KIM
    Single-channel video, 3min 8sec, 2023  
Animation: Hojin LEE
Sound: Ting Chun Liu

Face KIM’s body and head are constantly separated—especially during moments of emotional shock. The body endlessly searches for the head, but the character seems condemned to live in this fragmented state, gradually accepting it as part of her fate.

The Way of Being


Erasing Folk Tales

Three single-channel videos, 2023

This subseries challenges the ideological violence embedded in traditional Korean folktales that are still recommended as required reading for children. By deconstructing books such as Kongjwi and Patjwi, Princess Pyounggang and Stupid Ondal, and The Fairy and the Woodcutter, the artist confronts the patriarchal, moralizing, and often misogynistic messages within.

Each video work reenacts a ritual of resistance—physically and symbolically dismantling the texts. The process becomes a reclaiming of childhood, identity, and narrative authority.
The narration in each video represents my younger self.

        Kongjwi and Patjwi
        Single-channel video, 4min 18sec      
This is the Korean version of the Cinderella tale. As a child, I encountered it through various books and comics, and for a long time, I lived under a strong conviction shaped by its narrative—a belief about the kind of person I should become. Now, an alternative self approaches that younger version of me, speaking gently to the forces that once shaped such convictions. It is a story of revisiting and rewriting what was once accepted without question.  

        Princess Pyounggang and Stupid Ondal
        Single-channel video, 3min 25sec      
    As a child, I imagined a warm, peaceful scene: a kind woodcutter living with a heavenly fairy and their beloved children. I held onto that picture without knowing the deeper truth—that this tale is riddled with violence, coercion, and irreparable loss. What I once saw as comforting was, in fact, a story of control and abduction. This work is my younger self's attempt to rewrite that tale, reclaiming what was taken through silence and myth.  

        The Fairy and the Woodcutter
        Single-channel video, 3min 52sec      
    There was a time I resented Ondal deeply. Princess Pyeonggang seemed to be the perfect image of royalty, and it angered me that someone like Ondal was her chosen partner. But I didn’t see what lay beneath: that Pyeonggang herself was far from ideal, and that the figures around her—Ondal and her father—were far more brutal than I could have understood as a child. This piece is an analysis from that younger self, finally allowed to question the roles, the violence, and the expectations forced upon them.  

? Come from Mars, ? Come from Venus

Digital print, 153mm × 224mm, 2022

A direct intervention into the 1992 bestseller Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus by John Gray. In this altered version, every gendered term in the original book is redacted and overwritten with arbitrary, meaningless symbols. The act exposes the absurdity of binary assumptions by stripping the text of its central gender essentialist logic.

The final form is a new publication with the title ? come from Mars, ? come from Venus, highlighting the performative and constructed nature of gender categories through language itself.


Moving Drawing


Moving Drawing II_3D

Video, variable dimensions, 2022

In this 3D expansion of the project, the artist composed original sound pieces, then designed corresponding 3D drawings for each sonic layer. These elements were animated and spatially arranged to reflect the internal rhythm and texture of the sound. 
The work is divided into five parts, each offering different perspectives on how visual forms can be guided by auditory experience.

Part1, Animation, 2022
Part1_180, Animation, 2022
Part2, Animation, 2022
Part2_180, Animation, 2022
Part3, Animation, 2022
Part3_180, Animation, 2022
Part4, Animation, 2022
Part4_180, Animation, 2022
Part5, Animation, 2022
Part5_180, Animation, 2022

Moving Drawing I_2D with AR

Video, variable dimensions, 2021

This piece deconstructs open-source soundtracks by isolating the instruments and translating each one into a distinct 2D drawing element. 
Using the AR application Artivive, the final drawings are brought to life through augmented reality posters. The viewer can experience each musical-drawing composition by scanning the posters via the Artivive app, transforming a static medium into a layered audiovisual experience.

Part1, AR Poster, 2021
Part2, AR Poster, 2021
Part3, AR Poster, 2021
Part5, AR Poster, 2021

Mapping


Future 21# - Broken Castle

1min 40sec, Schiffshebewerk Henrichenburg, Germany, 2022

As part of the media art festival FUTUR 21, I contributed an original animation to a video mapping installation at the historic Schiffshebewerk Henrichenburg. My work metaphorically explored elements of the site's industrial and cultural history, resonating with the festival's broader theme of transformation and collective memory.

More about the festival:


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