Have you ever imagined that your desperate hopes would come true in front of your eyes? In my artistic practice, I have an ongoing interest in exploring alternatives to the status quo. I am focused on producing work that opens up dialogues that address situations involving large social, systemic forces that have suppressed people’s natural desires.

 

Through site-specific installations in public space, I transform sites into surreal images in a symbolic manner. I take elements of spaces that have been left behind or deemed as trash and make interventions that represent the original intention of each space. By deforming or transforming these elements, I explore questions such as ‘What might this space have become if the people using the space had their desires met?’ In the piece 'Monument for the Screams' (2012), I gathered pieces of glass that were scattered in front of an abandoned building in Weimar, Germany. The building was originally constructed as a cattle auction and later was used as a temporary collection place for people who were being sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp. I transformed these pieces into a chandelier and hung it in front of the entryway, in the place of a dysfunctional lamp. Through this intervention, I intended to illuminate this place which has changed over time and is currently where anonymous people drink at night. 

 

These metaphoric interventions start from my personal interpretation of the objects or sites by personifying them in my imagination. This process aims to reverse situations that appear impossible to change and provide an alternative reality in which we can reflect on the potential of each space; spaces turn from darkness to brightness from dependent to independent, or from desperate to be empowered. Through these interventions, I intend my works to play a healing role and give consolation to people including myself. In 2010, I created 'Speaking House' in the USA, transforming the air through a ventilator from inside my private studio into a giant speech-bubble-shaped balloon outside. This piece physicalized my speech and addressed the language barrier felt by many foreigners in America. Although it was a symbolic gesture, I strongly felt that my repressed pain was relieved through this installation. The experience enabled me to believe the possibility of art that can affect reality, and it led me to expand my perspective from personal to social issues. 

 

I try to demonstrate the gap between systematic social injustices and draw out the conditions that contribute to these injustices, which originate from large institutional frameworks such as capitalism or globalism. In order to reveal these issues relating to the site, both research and interviews are necessary. For the piece 'Searching for German Olive Oil in Greece' (2012), I researched the olive oil exchange system at Greek olive farms for about 3 weeks. Through this process, I found how Greek olive farm owners have lost their livelihood after Greece entered the Euro zone. Afterwards, I installed olive oil bottles packaged by the German-owned supermarket chain LIDL and hung them upside down in an empty shop. The olive oil slowly dropped down into unlabeled bottles on the floor, creating the sense of a gradual reversal of the unnatural situation in which Greece imports 11.8% of olive oil from Germany annually.

 

I aim to make work that opens up discussions that have stagnated over time and that cause hopelessness and social pressure. By bringing attention to sites where individuals are deprived, my interventions can lead audiences to interpret the sites in new ways and play a part in questioning the systems that have created this deprivation.