Geumhyung Jeong: Private Collection: Unperformed Objects

The first UK solo exhibition by South Korean artist Geumhyung Jeong. In her practice as choreographer, dancer and performer, Jeong constantly renegotiates the relationship between the human body and the objects that surround it. She has built up a collection of plain everyday objects upon which she bestows a bizarre, disconcerting life through an intense and risky interaction with her own body to challenge notions of sexuality, technology and the female body.

In 2016, Jeong exhibited her complete collection at Atelier Hermes in Seoul as the recipient of the Hermès Foundation Missulsang Award. For this new installation at Delfina Foundation, emerging from a residency supported by SongEun Art & Cultural Foundation, Jeong explores the relationship between her ‘collection’ and her creative process. Jeong has selected ‘unperformed objects’ – mannequins, vacuum cleaners, training machines and medical apparatus with a latent potential. The exhibition brings the narrative of these objects themselves into play, alongside decision-making and failure in the process of making performances.

In the gallery, these objects are clinically displayed on plinths, under strip lighting. Video monitors show clips of the ‘performed objects’ not present, those modified by Jeong and activated in durational performances where they are first used in intended and routine ways before Jeong’s movements morph into erotic, obsessive, or antagonistic actions. Jeong feeds her own energy back into these inanimate objects, positing the female body as the locus of reproductive responsibility within a gendered, exploitative economy.

In this light, the ‘unperformed objects’ become a collection of relics of a notion of civilization that Jeong seeks to challenge.