Heesoo Kwon

Visual Description: Heesoo Kwon’s A Ritual for Metamorphosis 탈피를 위한 의식 portrays domestic scenes on a flatscreen TV monitor. In one scene, a veiled woman in a white gown holding a bouquet stands next to a tuxedoed man while a priest overlooks them. A digital avatar of a nude figure is inserted into the scene post-production, appearing to lay an elbow on the priest’s shoulder. The videos are occasionally interrupted by digital snow and light damage to the original tape. In another scene, a green alien-like avatar observes an old woman sitting near a makeshift altar with religious icons and candles propped up in front of a mirror.

Curatorial Description: Heesoo Kwon’s A Ritual for Metamorphosis 탈피를 위한 의식 is created from family videos that were filmed by her father. Quotidian scenes like her parent’s traditional Catholic wedding and home cooked meals show evidence of her mother’s gendered subservience in a patriarchal household. This realization led Kwon to create “Leymusoom,” a fictional feminist religion whose name is derived from the Korean word for asexual (무성별). The religion’s snake goddess, Leymusoom, and Kwon’s avatar for herself are inserted into the tapes as rebellious spirits and spiritual guardians of her family’s matriarchs in the found footage. Inspired by Korean shamanism, the spiritual guardians protect the family’s matriarchs in a futile effort to correct the injustices of the past.

About

Heesoo Kwon (b. 1990, Seoul, South Korea) is a multidisciplinary artist based in San Francisco. Positioning herself as an artist, activist, archivist, anthropologist, and religious figure, Kwon builds feminist utopias in the digital realm that liberate one from personal, familial, and historical trauma rooted in patriarchy. Central to her practice and substantial bodies of work is Leymusoom, an autobiographical feminist religion she initiated in 2017 as a form of personal resistance against misogyny and an ever-evolving framework for investigating her family histories. Kwon utilizes technologies such as digital archiving, 3D scanning, and animation as her ritualistic and shamanistic tools to regenerate her woman ancestors’ lives without constraints of time and space, and to queer her past, present, and utopian dreams.