Q. Hello Yoona, it’s wonderful to have you participating in this interview. Could you briefly introduce yourself and tell us about your background in art?
A. Hi Richard, thank you so much for having me. To introduce myself briefly, I am a multimedia / new media artist. I love to code and tend to gravitate towards making browser-based works intertwined with some kind of performance or poetic element. Lately I’ve been working a lot with image transferring onto rocks and dabbling a bit into ceramics.
Q. I co-curated the "Doomscroll" exhibition at DODO Gallery in Brighton, this exhibition featured many interpretations of memes, and you were one of the participating artists. Could you explain what memes mean to you?
A. Absolutely! I am attracted to memes because they are like fossils to me. Every meme is imbued in a temporal and social context that I find to be revealing (and preserving) of our contemporary human condition and the dominant ideologies of any given moment.
I also think a lot about what pushes us towards meme-making and if it’s a similar process to lithification; the weight of real-world happenings compacting like subliminal, psychological sediment to induce the cementation of a cultural milieu — memes the petrified remains produced in the process... at least that’s how I choose to think about it.
For “Doomscroll,” I presented ME__WHEN___I____ME__ME. I called it an
“experiment in fawning” because I had been researching and collecting deer memes, exploring their relation to the coquette aesthetic and Western conceptions of femininity. I think something about the deer meme (that often takes the form of juxtaposing self-referential text with an image of an innocent, delicate fawn) is appealing for how it is permeated by what feels like moral fatalism. This sense of powerlessness — which I also believe to be at the core of doomscrolling behaviour — feels like a cultural reaction to an increasingly chaotic, hotter, uninhabitable world under late-stage capitalism. For
me, these fawn memes are so fruitful because they not only reveal a lot about Western notions of femininity (and their regressive undertones), but they also connect to Tiqqun’s theory of the Young-Girl — which is itself an ungendered concept meant to give form to the anthropotechnical project of Empire and the invisible omnipresence of imperialism. I think the increased proliferation of deer memes in the past year is a demonstration of how a feeling of helplessness (ridden with moral impunity) resonates with citizens of the imperial core — this position paradoxically one where we may feel an individual lack of power (politically) whilst responsible by proxy for the destruction
caused by the West (colonially, environmentally, etc).
“I like thinking about memes as fossils because they render us all as archaeologists in a way, given memes (and images) require a degree of subtextual legibility in order to “read” and decode certain cultural codes surrounding them.”
Q. During a short-term artist residency in Cyprus last year, I organised a show titled “#0000null”, as part of my curatorial development. I also displayed your work "what's-in-my-bag," which I found intriguing. What inspired you to create this series of work?
A. At the time, I was working a lot with Instagram Stories as their own medium — a medium that can never be severed from the act of performance (as they are only visible to others through one’s Instagram account) and exist as perfect metaphors for how our device screens and the Internet act as inescapable mediating agents of our
personhood. Experimenting with Instagram Stories as an art medium happened by accident really. Initially, I was editing pictures of myself into fictional scenarios because posting them “normally” felt personally impossible and somewhat shameful with family following me. With these fictional scenarios, I came to realize that I was relying a lot on how Instagram Stories operate with a naturally linear narrative and rely on the mechanism of unfolding this narrative with each press of your finger, frame by frame, like a mini film with jump cuts.
When I made the piece #what’s-in-my-bag, I was noticing the revival of the
what’s-in-my-bag trend appearing on my feed again after having grown up watching 2010s beauty and lifestyle Youtubers post their #What’sInMyBag videos. However, I was fascinated by how these new what’s-in-my-bag posts felt satirical of the original trend and featured everything and anything from Sylvia Plath poems, Calico Critters, and cigarette butts in their supposed bag. I felt that the what’s-in-my-bag phenomenon pointed to greater implications about material culture and its relation to performed and perceived identity online. Whether “serious” or not, every what’s-in-my-bag post is ultimately a kind of socio-cultural signifier and exercise in performing the self online.
My what’s-in-my-bag is intentionally whimsical — with an empty headstone, a
reminder of what I look like, a friend in case I get bored (a rat), money (shells), moss, sheet music, a spare tooth, ibuprofen, and some luck (invisible) — many of these items being neither physical nor virtual nor something I may actually own. In an interview with NYLON magazine, I mentioned that the appeal of knowing what is in other people’s bags is rooted in capitalism and how the notion that “we are what we consume” imbues meaning into material possessions as being representative of who we are internally, thus conceptualizing our belongings as the perceived essence of our being.
The artist Molly Soda takes these ideas a step further with a bag filled solely
with images — images as being representative of the self (and perhaps the aspirational self more than the “real self”) beyond the physical realm of material possessions. I’m fascinated by what this may imply about identity online (and the ideas of post-identity) being pure simulation divorced from any material, physical reality, and if images are now “manifestations of our existence” more than our own flesh and blood.
Q. What are you focusing on right now?
A. Right now, my focus is on “aesthetic” images — their production, means of
circulation, existence as social currency, the culture surrounding such images, and so on. Currently, my research is specifically about how Western hegemony is maintained online in the form of the Americana aesthetic (often represented by the American flag print as accessory / wear, wild west imagery like Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter cover, etc). With the growing fascism prevalent within the United States and America’s direct involvement in the genocide against the Palestinian people, I was disturbed and honestly baffled at seeing the American flag and symbols of the West proliferating under an aesthetic context by moodboard accounts, influencers, and even posts of fashion fittings incorporating the red, white, and blue flag as stylistic elements. While calling it “subversive” or a “transgressive cultural reaction” is an initial answer, I think that this aesthetic phenomenon is the invisible claw of imperialism made visible. I’m currently working on a browser-based performance piece that exploits this subliminal
function of aesthetics — and its ability to manufacture desire and thus consent — to expose and give shape to these “aesthetic trappings” of imperialism.
“I’m fascinated by what this may imply about identity online (and the ideas of post-identity) being pure simulation divorced from any material, physical reality, and if images are now “manifestations of our existence” more than our own flesh and blood.”
Q. Do you have any upcoming exhibitions?
A. I do! I will be included in a group show on art + technology curated by Zack
Nguyen at Arts Fort Worth (Fort Worth, Texas) this August showing a new ceramic + video performance installation and an installation of my net.art piece
o-p-h-e-l-i-a-you.live. In October, I’ll also be presenting an installation of the piece on Americana I am currently working on. It’ll be on view at the plumb gallery in a group show curated by Ciar O’Mahony in Toronto.
Q. I believe that generosity is an excellent way to gain and maintain support in the arts. Are there any other artists or curators you believe we should be aware of?
A. Gosh there are so many whom I love that it’s hard to keep this short (I’m blessed to know such wonderful, talented people), but I’ll start with the curator I just mentioned — Zack Nguyen — whose personal work is passionate, vulnerable and as an artist truly lives and breathes art. The art world (in America) is heavily bicoastal to a fault because there is amazing art to be found in places like Texas that will always hold a special place in my heart. Based in Dallas, I love Jiatong Yao’s VR and AR work that addresses body politics in digital space and ideas of the post-human in our increasingly virtualized world. My beloved mentor, Laura Hyunjhee Kim is a multimedia artist and
educator whose extensive body of work feels like a treasure chest that I am constantly rediscovering, experiencing, and finding inspiration within. The experimental performance art group Therefore led by Dean Terry is also a Dallas-based gem that is just another reason why I would like to see Texas-based artists given the attention and recognition they deserve, especially within the wider art + technology scene.
Q. Could you give us your website or Instagram account so that others can locate your platform?
A. Of course! My website is yo0na.com (as yoona.com is a fan site for Girls
Generation’s Im Yoonah which I think is awesome) and my Instagram is @yo0n___a