Soyoung Chung’s practice carefully studies the minor and discarded remnants of lifeforms—objects, crumbs, traces, strata, andpeelings—that she encounters and collects amid her daytoday routine. Stemming from her focus on organic materials, geology, the cosmos, and geopolitics, Chung produces researchbased installations, sculptures, and videos that observe the forms of these phenomena on spatial and ontological levels. Her works explore formations of placeness and boundaries by considering the ways in which these notions unfold in ecological and civic life, thereby shaping our approach to navigating the world. The video installation Drawing an Island assumes a bird’s eye perspective of a ship constantly turning clockwise while dragging a rope behind it, which causes the ocean’s white foam to appear and disappear. The video invokes the geopolitical and mythical status of Ieoh Island, a submerged rock located in Korea’s Southern Sea that is also claimed by China as a part of its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Thinking between the political complexity of space and its portrayal as a mythical utopia, the work explores the intrinsic tensions that suffuse real and imagined notions of place, as well as the impossibility of their resolution.
