A young Yu

Lives and works in New York, NY, USA

Artist statement

Through performance-based film and site-specific installation, I explore Korean folk traditions and spiritual practices. Passed on generationally, they connect me to my family and to a land whose absence I feel palpably. However, I am not faithful to historical canon. My work aims to transgress older traditions, regenerating them within contemporary contexts. My films document performances, which distill movements from ancestral rituals and develop new choreographies reflecting collective and personal experiences. Performances are meditations on belonging, sexuality, trauma, and migration. I film in spaces ranging from immersive installations to psychologically charged landscapes. I create hyperbolic environments made of silk, oil, flowers and plants, water, and soil; they are incubators birthing new rituals. I also intervene in spaces already laden with meaning— family burial mounds, national parks, the demilitarized zone bordering North Korea and South Korea— with sculptures reimagining sacred objects and altars. Using the language of my heritage, I construct new narratives. I appropriate visual cues and materials from my upbringing to speak about loss and renewal of hope. I question my role in continuing to pass on history and culture and look to methods of disruption and transformation.

Artwork