A Daughter’s “Regret” or “Feedback”
Jinshil Lee
Hyelim Hong's landscapes resemble chaotic assemblages of construction materials, misused and left in disarray. Since 2020, the artist has used subsidiary construction materials as the primary medium for her work. These include not only familiar materials such as cement, pipes, rebar, chains, and nails but also rougher less familiar ones like mohair seals for window sashes, coatings, waterproofing agents, galvanized steel sheets, expanded polystyrene insulation, and nail gun nails. Materials typically intended for creating architectural spaces are stripped of their conventional purposes and methods of use. Instead, they stand as grotesque sculptural assemblages—upright, leaning, or sprawled haphazardly across the floor.
After completing her studies in Germany in 2019, Hyelim Hong began to solidify her artistic practice in Korea, drawing heavily on her autobiographical background for both the themes and materials of her work. This background includes her father, an architect, and her family who have lived together for four generations. In the early stages of her career in Korea, Hong’s works primarily consisted of found objects and flat compositions, incorporating items tied to the home and family. In 2021, through the Gadget Project, she began collaborating with architectural technicians. These collaborations extended beyond merging art and architecture, weaving in complex personal narratives and emotions. The artist has been familiar with construction sites and materials since childhood, and the field of architecture revolves around establishing spatial order. Yet, it carries a masculine strength, intensity, and scale that can feel inherently violent.
Two aspects of the emotions Hyelim Hong channels into her work, shaped by her experiences during her studies in Germany, are particularly intriguing. One is the masculine and exclusionary nature of architectural materials and techniques in Korea, where women are neither expected to know about them nor given space to engage. In contrast, in Germany, there is a sense of liberation—an accessibility that allows one to freely shop and experiment with these materials, much like browsing in a Bauhaus-style hardware store (Baumarkt). After returning from her training in sophisticated art creation in such a developed country, the artist—a cherished daughter—finds herself relearning welding and concrete casting from gruff local construction men. Simultaneously, she mimics and disrupts these techniques to "supply" her works to the world. Thus, the artist said she projected a sense of “regret” rather than feelings of vengeance or anger. Another compelling emotion she shares stems from a familiar mix of sorrow and frustration we may feel when observing older women in Western countries. Why are our grandmothers all hunched over while theirs remain upright even in old age? Hong addresses the labor of Korean women—especially domestic labor—and the ensuing degradation of their physicality through various terminologies and empathetic metaphors.
The 2023 project Kiss! Kiss my too small, medium, too large burr provided a platform for integrating gender-conscious themes with the sculptural medium employing construction materials. The unfamiliar term burr refers to defects or errors that arise during processes such as construction or precision manufacturing. In several works produced through collaboration with construction technicians, the artist not only generates an abundance of burrs but also adopts them as a deliberate methodology. Her conceptual framework remains closely tied to the realm of architecture. Phrases like too small or too large denote clear benchmarks of scale, and, as Rem Koolhaas notes in his renowned book S, M, L, XL, scale and its scalability are pivotal concerns in architecture. By proliferating the flawed forms produced by imperfections, the artist seeks to transform the scalability of architecture—rooted in programs and precise design—into a chaotic and unpredictable excremental comedy.
In her August 2024 solo exhibition, Hysterical Feedback, held at Alternative Space LOOP, Hyelim Hong further developed her exploration of these themes. Drawing on the concept of hysteria—once considered a female illness and literally meaning a wandering uterus—the chaotic assemblages and errors of construction materials expanded into even more sprawling forms. The works in this exhibition eschewed conventional titles and are identified instead by a straightforward list of their materials. Examples include Expanded Polystyrene, Rebar, Water Transfer Paper, Ink, Architectural Coating/Waterproofing Agent, Wood Adhesive, Mohair Seal (2024) and Wire Mesh, Concrete Blocks, Mortar Cement, Architectural Coating/Adhesive/Waterproofing Agent, Pipe Insulation, Coil Nails, Binding Nails, Ink, Wet Wipes (2024). This approach underscores the focus on disrupted processes and mutable forms rather than a polished and finalized state. A striking standing sculpture features a triangular steel plate laser-cut with the word Hysterie (Hysteria). Yet, its title is similarly descriptive: Wood, Industrial Oil-Absorbent Rags (Grade A, Halved), Architectural Coating/Adhesive/Waterproofing Agent, Mortar Cement, Ink, Chains, Screws, Mohair Seal (2024). The artist describes the rebellious act of manipulating construction materials as a "feedback" of feminine hysteria, a destructive impulse that feels simultaneously aggressive and regressive. The wordplay on feces, intended to evoke an excremental comedy, also recalls the regressive and transgressive tendencies of 1990s Western abject art which sought to defy and subvert male subjectivity.
However, the metaphors in Hyelim Hong's recent work produce somewhat ambiguous effects. The pleasure derived from rough finishes and errors emerges when one feels the pressure of an imposed expectation for completion because the direction and trajectory of these sculptures in their current forms are unpredictable. Moreover, architectural materials such as cement, galvanized steel sheets, and insulation foam like Isopink are ubiquitous in contemporary sculpture, albeit to varying extents. Similarly, waterproofing and water-repellent agents, which are fundamentally silicone-based, possess a slimy fluid consistency and plasticity that many artists use to convey diverse meanings related to physicality. Sculptures resisting phallic uprightness while evoking dirty catastrophic atmospheres are also far from rare. This raises the question: what emotions are triggered by the meanings derived from the medium—in other words, from Hong’s “feedback”? The multitude of materials and metaphors employed seem to appear in a somewhat indiscriminate manner, leaving the emotions one might interpret from them frustratingly opaque.
Perhaps one could say that the meaning of sculpture itself is inherently divisive. It may also suggest an ambivalence lurking beneath—an irresistible fascination with the overwhelming power and violence evoked by the scale and atmosphere of construction or architecture. The artist has described her emotional stance as ambivalence, a sentiment that is both productive and problematic. Just as she articulates her resistant feelings toward patriarchal order and oppression as regret, it is not a declaration of rupture or defiance but a language and gesture of relationship, which anticipates reconciliation and reconnection. This could be interpreted as the masked yet conciliatory gesture of a daughter—a woman confined within domains shaped by masculine order, whether architectural or familial. Yet, unless this ambivalence or fragmentation advances toward a new dimension of creation or construction, it remains uncertain whether it can become a productive mechanism for the artist herself. Hong’s self-awareness also plays a critical role here. The title Hysterical Feedback seems to contain an element of self-mockery directed at her own gestures. Can the act of disrupting, dismantling, and disarraying architecture and patriarchal structures transcend the oscillating tension between a desire for recognition and anger? We await the emergence of a singularity from the proliferation of burrs, one that moves beyond the superficial transgressions typical of Western abject art.
Jinshil Lee (Art Critic, Independent Curator )
Jinshil Lee is an art critic and independent curator with an academic background in aesthetics. In 2019, she founded the curatorial and publishing collective Agrafa Society and launched the webzine SEMINAR with fellow members. That same year, she received the SeMA–Hana Art Criticism Award. She is the author of Love and Ambition: Time Differences in Contemporary Korean Feminist Art (2022), a critical study of contemporary art. Her curatorial projects include Happy Time Is Good (Hapjungjigu, 2021), Stranger Than Paradise (BOAN1942, 2019), Mirrors of Mirrors of Mirrors (Hapjungjigu, 2018), and Read My Lips (co-curated, Hapjungjigu, 2017).
