Issue
The Sketch: Geumhyung Jeong
From medical dummies and mannequin limbs to salvaged motors and heavy machinery, the objects in Korean choreographer and artist Geumhyung Jeong’s works are at once playthings, lovers, and collaborators—probing the entanglements of desire, control, and the more-than-human. Trained in theater and dance, Jeong merges the architectonics of the stage with a visual artist’s compositional sensibility, giving her oeuvre an idiosyncratic precision that is as choreographic as it is sculptural. While she is internationally recognized for producing uncanny performances—or “duets,” as she calls them—in which Jeong interacts with her inanimate, corporeal creations, less is known about her self-initiated projects beyond the institutional context. For Condition Check (2023– ), she transforms her Bucheon atelier, on the outskirts of Seoul, into a storage facility for her works, casting herself as registrar, conservator, and hospitality manager. In Delivery Service (2017– ), she mobilizes her own body as a logistics apparatus, traversing the city to deliver an envelope to the audiences who await her at home. In our forthcoming feature, curator and writer Jiwon Yu revisits these overlooked dimensions of Jeong’s practice, revealing an artist who not only performs with objects, but also engages with the physical infrastructures that frame the acts.