Your creative practice has always been influenced by the past and merging that into the future, why do you choose to bridge the two?

It's to contemplate the things I feel, explore what is absent and resist being forgotten. Although at times, one must forget in order to live. This is why artificial intelligence today is accelerating the age of automation by encouraging us to forget for the sake of convenience. However, this new digital culture ironically seems to politicise everything and enforce ethical scrutiny.

During these uncertain times, where illogical decisions and disasters have become everyday occurrences, I want to search for new directions in technological development and contemplate the significance of collective time as a way to move forward with my work. This means not being limited by my own experiences and understanding but instead achieving a broader view, rather than relying only on the experience and my own perspective.

Are there artworks where you’ve explored the present?

I have been creating works that displace objects on the boundaries and escape the genre and narrative of Western art history. My work focuses on archiving and collecting as many examples as possible, in order to deconstruct images and their expected function.

Among the ongoing series, Portable Keeper and O Tannenbaum are good examples. They involve performances that take place in vanishing, disappearing places or non-places. Those series examine how one can participate in the crippled present by experimenting with media and deconstructing genres. At the same time, they examine the conditions of today's failures to search for ways to address and make sense of coincidences.

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Talking about the past, did you always want to be an artist? How did you get into art?

For me, it’s more important to focus on how I can continue to live as an artist than wanting to be an artist. If becoming an artist is like going against gravity, one must understand what gravity is. However, the boundaries of neoliberalism seem to confirm that I am not an artist because I want to but rather it is determined by context and structure.

I believe that those who want to become an artist need to develop the strength to counter such negative influences, such as being gaslighted by the media and public image.

You also often mix your work with various elements instead of focusing on just one medium, how do you decide which medium to go with for a specific artwork?

It mostly depends on how I imagine the site of the material. Materials are objects that function as diverse actors and I feel as though they are phantoms, uncertain of what will become of them in the future. Therefore, my work focuses more on creating circumstances of "becoming" heterogeneous, rather than expressing my intent.

See also: Meet Phoebo Hui, The First Solo Female Artist To Present The Audemars Piguet Art Commission In Asia

You describe that your work stems from “contaminated feelings”, as if a double spy suffering an identity crisis, have there been times that you as an artist, feel this identity crisis and how did you overcome it?

I have been suffering from this feeling of a looming collapse ever since I returned to Korea from Paris. Due to the conflict between Korean education and the French way of life, I had to send my daughter to live in Guadeloupe, on the other side of the world from Korea. This period was the most painful time in my life.

When I visited Guadeloupe for a month, I felt as though the palm trees were not just swaying in the wind but as though they were weeping. The loud chorus of frogs at night sounded like the fast-revolving door of reincarnation and the stars streaming across the sky over my head seemed like the whipping of a past that has eventually arrived. I was torn in despair between my identity as a mother and survival as an artist.

I could see why many female artists have no choice but to stop working after having children. However, something became very clear to me as I continued to work as an artist. I realized I gained more courage when I create works for those that I long for, rather than trying to define any meaning in my work.

Based on the title of this exhibition, what curtain (either a social or political issue) do you want to pull and let more people know about?

The age of globalization is now confronted with the age of the Covid-19 pandemic, warning us that humans have been reading the "curtain" in a one-sided perspective. Were you an elderly man in the past and are you a child in the future? The past was already the future. I believe that art is something that allows us to examine the existence overlooked by politics and technology. I hope to confront what hides, and is hidden, behind the curtain and trace a way.

See also: Artist Loie Hollowell On How Motherhood Inspired Her Paintings

How do you feel about your work coming to Hong Kong, especially amidst the pandemic when you can't travel?

I don't travel much except for exhibitions so I have never been to Hong Kong yet. I was introduced to Hong Kong through the films I saw as a student in Paris and have always wanted to visit. I'm so excited and grateful that I will get to meet with the audience in Hong Kong through my work.

I believe this age of the pandemic is a time to give up certain things in our lives for the sake of others, in order for all of us to live together. I'd like to express my sincere respect to the citizens of Hong Kong, who have sacrificed and come together for those overlooked in the margins.

See also: Hong Kong Artist Movana Chen On Making Art During The Pandemic

"Curtain" opens from May 14, 2021 at Para Site's venue in Quarry Bay and on May 15, 2021 at the institution’s temporary venue in 22/F, Soho House Hong Kong, 33 Des Voeux Rd West, Sheung Wan.