Archive

PICK ONE

XR Installation, Cologne, Germany, 2026

Concept & Direction: Hojin Lee
Engine Development: Shipeng Ouyang
Animation: Hojin Lee, Jiwoo Kim, Jinyoung Yoo
Set Design & Research: Jin-a Lee
Sound: On Lee
AI Prompting: Yoonha Song
Poster Design: Hyunji Seo
Installation: Hyunji Seo, Jin-a Lee, On Lee, Yoonha Song
Watch documentation: verison A

verison B

A central component of PICK ONE is the coexistence of two parallel XR environments, each constructing a distinct experiential logic.

Version A

Version A is based on archival research into public service and commercial campaigns from the 1950s to the 1970s across multiple countries.

Recurring visual motifs from these campaigns were analyzed, layered, and reconfigured within a contemporary context. While each figure performs different visual actions and occupies distinct social roles, all ultimately arrive at the same conclusion: the repeated offering of a box of chocolates as a reward. The endings unfold almost like a copy-and-paste structure, repeating identical gestures and phrases despite their differing appearances.

In this version, the box of chocolates functions as a metaphor for normative reward systems tied to heteronormative and modernist models of life. What initially appears familiar, comforting, and realistic is gradually revealed to be entirely artificial: both the figures and the objects exist solely as simulated images generated within digital systems.

Version A questions the illusion of normality and exposes the constructed nature of hegemonic ideals. At the same time, it offers a critical perspective on the recent resurgence of “TradWife” aesthetics and narratives circulating through social media, examining how historical structures of gendered desire.

From version B to version A

Version B

Version B constructs a counter-space in which difference is not treated as something to be regulated, but understood as value in itself.

The XR environment is composed of deliberately unrealistic imagery, yet paradoxically it resonates more deeply with lived experience than normative ideals do. This contrast reveals the central tension of the work: what appears realistic and “natural” within dominant social systems is often highly constructed and illusory, while queer-feminist imaginaries—frequently dismissed as unrealistic—can feel profoundly intuitive, embodied, and real.

A central spatial element is a circular body of water that visitors are invited to step onto. Defying physical expectations, the water supports the body, reconfiguring the relationship between presence, perception, and belief. Through this impossible yet tangible interaction, the work challenges assumptions about what is considered stable, believable, or natural.

A physical mirror object further confronts visitors with their own reflection, accompanied by the message:

“You are so beautiful, even more yourself.”

This gesture functions as a direct act of resistance against systems of categorization and social normalization. Rather than reinforcing imposed identities, it invites forms of self-recognition that exist beyond externally enforced frameworks, offering a counter-response to normative structures and their mechanisms of control.

From version A to version B

Installation view with visitors

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
Watch documentation

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
Watch documentation

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
Watch documentation

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