collaboration credit
@Western Front Society, Vancouver, Canada
VR Tech: Jonny Ostrem, Ian Lavery, Medeleine Francis,
Dance: Frances Amelia Agbanyani and Kim Gelera from KPOP dance cover group 'Yours Truly'
Curator: Allison Collins

@Asia Culture Center, Gwangju, Korea
Sound: Shirosky
Installation: II-Mok Park, Jae-young Ahn
VR: Jongnam Kim

documentation by
artist self
Asia Cultuer Center (photo by Sarah Kim)

work made possible by
Western Front Society, Vancouver, Canada
Asia Culture Center, Gwangju, Korea

'Yaloo Seaweed Project' starts with 'seaweed' as the 'face' of Asian identity. Within the context of Korean diaspora, 'seaweed soup' much like a birthday cake, is a dish she has on her birthday. This is one of the traditions held on by many Koreans in and outside of Korea. The origin of eating seaweed soup on birthdays comes from part of postnatal care for mothers; to supplement nutrients mothers need after birth. Simple yet significant, this tradition continues to this day both for mothers and birthdays.

Extending from this anecdote, 'Yaloo Seaweed Project' explores the multiple narratives within East Asia, from Japan's seaweed harvest rituals on Lunar New Year's to China's rapid growing consumption of seaweed. With this growing demand, the seaweed cultivation technology in response is developing rapidly driven by the socio-economic boost of seaweed rising as one of the 'star' export products of Asia. Technological advancement spreads wider and broader in this context.

Reflecting on the relationship between highly commercialized products like seaweed and technology, 'Yaloo Seaweed Project' creates a form of translation through technology specifically projection mapping and Virtual Reality. This process mimics how Yaloo translates Korean to English, in immersing into a new language and culture yet somehow circulating around them as a second and or third language. Yaloo boldly states herself as one of these 'export' products of Korea.

Currently based in Chicago, Yaloo mirrors preconceived notions and perspectives of Asian identity in the western world, in her attempt to redefine this from her internal Asian identity as well as her external Western identity, coexisting and negotiating with each other.

'Yaloo Korean Mask Series’ is the third element in conceptualizing 'Yaloo Seaweed Project'. The face masks often seen in duty free shops and touristy streets of Korea where crowds of young people flock to get a hold of the next new popular facial mask product that 'revitalizes', 'refresh', 'nurtures' your skin for a better and younger looking 'face'. Based on the shape of this mask, that is generic yet recognizable and homogeneous yet diverse in its overall simple oval shape form with two simple eye holes and a mouth hole, Yaloo finds an epoch fitting as the coherent basis of her multiple subjects and approaches in her works of this time.

In 'Duty Free Art', Hito Steyerl concludes "And this is indeed an uprising of images, against architecture of representation that holds them in servitude and subjects them." Breaking away from the common notion in associating 'surface' to 'superficiality', she argues through the words of Fredric Jameson 'emergence of a new kind of flatness or depthlessness, a new kind of superficiality,' and goes on to restate surface as something that 'folds in subjects, objects, and vectors of motion, effect and action, thus removing the artificial epistemological separation between them.'Yaloo Seaweed Project' does just that. It generates the least resistant (Kracauer) surfaces bridging the intersections of art and technology, tradition and contemporary culture within Asia 'folding' into a new form of superficiality that blurs the 'epistemological separation'.

Speaking and dealing with multiple languages from art, technology, English and Korean, Yaloo brings a new sense of sur'face' that well reproduces the contemporary society. The contemporary consumption of images with newer and faster technology is on explosive incline. Yaloo rearranges this mass-consumption of images into animated techno-aesthetic experiences that constantly update and shift.. Accordingly, she continues to re-sculpt the ‘face’ with explorations into new language and culture through her travels to various residencies and collaborations with local characters from f ashion designer, seamstress, K-pop cover dancer, engineer, furniture carpenter to craftsman. ‘Yaloo Seaweed Project’ constructs an inclusive and immersive mythology of multi-sensory experience with infinite new ‘faces’.

TEXT ㅣ InYoung Yeo (Director of Space One)


Virtual Reality Application developing process
while artist residency at Western Front Society, Vancouver, Canada
projection mapping sculpture-Seaweed Mask, Virtual Reality Application

collaboration credit
@Western Front Society, Vancouver, Canada
VR Tech: Jonny Ostrem, Ian Lavery, Medeleine Francis,
Dance: Frances Amelia Agbanyani and Kim Gelera from KPOP dance cover group 'Yours Truly'
Curator: Allison Collins

@Asia Culture Center, Gwangju, Korea
Sound: Shirosky
Installation: II-Mok Park, Jae-young Ahn
VR: Jongnam Kim

documentation by
artist self
Asia Cultuer Center (photo by Sarah Kim)

work made possible by
Western Front Society, Vancouver, Canada
Asia Culture Center, Gwangju, Korea