Sangwoo Yoo

Lives and works in Chicago, IL

Artist statement

I create art to reconnect the dulled senses of contemporary subjects. My experience as an archaeologist drew me toward objects that carry the weight of accumulated time, yet the social reality around me felt oversaturated—shaped by rapid, unruly shifts. For those numbed by this landscape, I work through bodily senses—such as scent and touch—alongside the visual. My work aims to build a still refuge where the body and mind can meet, slow down, and linger. In Portrait of Loss, I explore how botanical beings become objectified within cultural contexts and how their inherent significance fades. The project emerged from the temporal dissonance of encountering a monumental Christmas tree abandoned on a Chicago street, days after the holidays had ended. By deconstructing the remnants into fir-scented dust, I rendered the emotions of loss embedded in this cultural icon into an olfactory form. Dust ephemerally fades, paper boats soften and dissolve in water, and everything eventually returns to the land, seeding new life. I work with the ecological rhythms of materials, creating compositions shaped by vitality and mortality through substances gathered from specific sites. In a world dense with residual matter, this practice becomes a gesture of release and responsibility. My practice is becoming a quiet, collective act—where shared presence softens boundaries and returns gestures, materials, and attention to a common environment. I am drawn to the question of how materials that...

Artwork