2026 ACK ack ack ack: Artist-Critic Matching Program
Always Transparent, Unconcealed, the Immutable “Self”
언제나 투명하게, 노골적으로, 불변의 '나': 정재연
Original text by Jaeyeon Chung
Read the original text
번역: 김미혜
Translated by Mihye Kim
My skin had been fine for a while, but now it's a mess again. Spring in New York is so dry that I am constantly coughing, and every inch of my body itches so badly that it's all I can think about. Ah! My nail. It broke again. I casually flick it onto the desk. The jagged edge of the broken nail catches against my skin and gets on my nerves. I notice these tiny discomforts so easily, yet I rarely spare a thought for the piece of nail that's fallen away.
Based in New York, artist Park Jungeun (b. 1999) explores the diverse textures and sensations encountered in everyday life, traces separated from the body, and the things we see, touch, and experience every day yet so easily overlook. Transforming these elements into glass and ceramic, she constructs a sculptural language that preserves them in fixed forms. Park is particularly interested in the traces of the body and of life that we are aware of yet habitually ignore. By merging these remnants with the immutable materiality of glass, she presents them as contemplative objects that invite reflection. She emphasizes that the subtle tactile experiences of daily life—such as repeated gestures of putting on, taking off, rolling, or gripping a ring—constitute an artistic practice in which sensation, attitude, and action are inseparably intertwined. This approach reflects her broader artistic inquiry into challenging the conventional belief that ordinary objects and materials hold no inherent artistic value. The artist also investigates materials that have separated from the body but continue to bear biological traces—hair, umbilical cords, wisdom teeth, placentas, tears, and menstrual blood—reintroducing them as visual subjects. Her works evoke specimens in which the body's interior has been preserved and solidified, rendered through smooth, polished surfaces. Through the unique properties of glass, these traces of life and the body are transformed into permanent sculptural forms. As Park writes in her artist statement: "I observe and remember the uncomfortable moments that, day after day, arrest my gaze, my thoughts, and my steps. These are scenes involving the body that we casually pass by or deliberately avert our gaze from in everyday life: a blood clot inside a raw egg, a dead rat, a pigeon limping on an infected foot, the mites that inhabit our pores."
Park Jungeun extends her conception of life beyond a human-centered hierarchy, recognizing animals as equally vital beings. The rats and pigeons commonly encountered in New York are not merely animals, but figures that reveal, in condensed form, the city’s social hierarchies, conditions of survival, and feelings of disgust. In particular, they are perceived as invisible beings that have endured within deteriorating urban systems, as marginalized forms of life inhabiting the neglected shadows of the city—unregulated and excluded. The work <Blue Death> (2024) addresses these concerns through the image of a dead rat placed upon dry earth. The artist begins with the image of a dead rat she discovered one day outside her own door. The bluish flesh and the transformation of its fur that emerge during the process of decay evoke, simultaneously, the boundaries between disgust, life, and death. She reconstitutes this image through glass, a highly refined material. At the moment when an unpleasant image is transformed into the smooth, transparent material of glass, its visual repulsiveness is removed, while paradoxically generating a more complex and layered sensory experience.
![[translation] Always Transparent, Unconcealed, the Immutable “Self”](https://cdn.imweb.me/upload/S202204293a6eb15f078f5/cbdfba611ee47.jpeg)
![[translation] Always Transparent, Unconcealed, the Immutable “Self”](https://cdn.imweb.me/upload/S202204293a6eb15f078f5/eb146e60f3987.jpeg)
<푸른 죽음(Blue Death)>, 2024, 유리, 흙, 크레용, 15 x 5.6 x 4.3 cm
This work serves as a metaphor for beings that survive alongside humans within urban environments yet ultimately become excluded, while calling attention to life as another form of “companion” within the city. At the same time, the high density and chemical stability of glass paradoxically preserve the vitality of life, which is constantly shifting and disappearing, holding the uncontrolled energy of living matter in a sculptural state. Here, vitality exists like invisible particles, condensed in a state not yet fully revealed—like the reproductive organs of a shellfish, the yolk inside an egg, or the embryo dormant within a grain of rice. <Rice> (2025) expands this condition at the most microscopic scale. The artist enlarges a single grain of rice and reconstructs its internal “rice embryo” alongside it. The rice embryo is the part of the grain from which a new sprout emerges; biologically, it is embryonic tissue capable of developing into new life. Rather than existing as a completed form, it remains in a latent state containing infinite possibilities. Park transforms the structure of the rice embryo into the earliest stage of cellular differentiation preceding the formation of an organism, revealing that even within the everyday ingredients we consume without thought, the potential structures of life are embedded. This line of inquiry extends to the observation of the female body. The artist closely examines her own body through an almost anatomical approach, focusing on bodily parts such as reproductive organs that are socially assigned specific functions or whose functions are not fully realized. The female body exists as a structure that repeatedly enacts the rhythms of generating life while simultaneously enduring pain and discomfort throughout the process. <The Fish (decidual cast)> (2025) emerges from this embodied experience. A mass of uterine lining found within menstrual blood can take on a form resembling a fish, and the artist reconstructs this bodily trace through sculpture. The forms of the fallopian tubes on both sides of the uterus are transformed into the branching structure of a goldfish tail. This work reinterprets menstruation not simply as a biological discharge, but as a rhythm of life in which processes of creation and dissolution continually repeat.
![[translation] Always Transparent, Unconcealed, the Immutable “Self”](https://cdn.imweb.me/upload/S202204293a6eb15f078f5/3cca575a3536e.jpeg)
![[translation] Always Transparent, Unconcealed, the Immutable “Self”](https://cdn.imweb.me/upload/S202204293a6eb15f078f5/bd4e38a6a41be.jpeg)
<쌀>, 2025, 유리, 12 x 13.5 x 30 cm
![[translation] Always Transparent, Unconcealed, the Immutable “Self”](https://cdn.imweb.me/upload/S202204293a6eb15f078f5/5472efbbee0c0.jpeg)
<The Fish (decidual cast), 2025, 유리,17.0 × 13.7 × 3.6 cm
![[translation] Always Transparent, Unconcealed, the Immutable “Self”](https://cdn.imweb.me/upload/S202204293a6eb15f078f5/28b3cdbefec3c.png)
자궁 내막 해부학 모식도
![[translation] Always Transparent, Unconcealed, the Immutable “Self”](https://cdn.imweb.me/upload/S202204293a6eb15f078f5/5722c3c9cc0e2.jpeg)
<태반((Placenta)>, 2025, 도자(라쿠 소성), 26.7 x 25.9 x 4.8 cm
The female body exists as a state that holds the potential to generate life while simultaneously being accompanied by limitations and discomfort in everyday experience. The artist transforms this bodily condition not as a form of deficiency or loss, but as another possibility for creation. In this process, materials separated from the body do not simply disappear; instead, they remain as structures of potential capable of forming new configurations. <Placenta> (2025) faithfully recreates the placenta, the organ that connects the fetus to the maternal uterine lining. The placenta supplies the fetus with oxygen and nutrients received from the mother, protects the developing fetus, and facilitates the removal of waste products. Contrary to common assumptions, the placenta is not created solely by the mother but is formed through the developing fetus itself. Once the baby is born, the placenta completes its function and separates from the body. It is a presence that was once indispensable yet ultimately becomes a discarded remnant, abandoned after having fulfilled its vital role. The artist directly observes the placenta, researches medical texts, and traces the processes involved in the emergence of life. The vividly red, blood-like mass and the branching structures resembling blood vessels are grounded in biological reality while simultaneously evoking the wonder of the body’s hidden interior through sculptural form. This work is produced through the Raku firing technique. During the process, ceramic pieces removed from the kiln at high temperatures are rapidly cooled at a lower temperature, creating irregular cracks and scorched marks across the surface as traces of smoke and heat become embedded within the material. These material transformations visualize the instability and tension inherent in uncontrolled biological processes. To recreate the textures of the placenta and internal bodily membranes, the artist uses cabbage leaves with clearly visible veins. The work also reveals the irregular variations of color and form that continue to transform even through the process of separation from the body. With its smooth yet unfamiliar surface, the placenta exists as an organ that sustains and circulates life, while the umbilical cord connecting the fetus and placenta recalls the most primal structure of union between two bodies that have not yet been separated.
![[translation] Always Transparent, Unconcealed, the Immutable “Self”](https://cdn.imweb.me/upload/S202204293a6eb15f078f5/9c2bebacd3b1d.jpeg)
![[translation] Always Transparent, Unconcealed, the Immutable “Self”](https://cdn.imweb.me/upload/S202204293a6eb15f078f5/ea97ca67af4b0.jpeg)
<탯줄(Umbilical Cord)>, 2025, 유리, 28.2 x 2.3 x 3.6 cm
![[translation] Always Transparent, Unconcealed, the Immutable “Self”](https://cdn.imweb.me/upload/S202204293a6eb15f078f5/3391ef807f28a.png)
![[translation] Always Transparent, Unconcealed, the Immutable “Self”](https://cdn.imweb.me/upload/S202204293a6eb15f078f5/d31f1a3176d77.png)
탯줄 실물 사진과 조직 단면도
<Umbilical Cord> (2025) emerges from the artist’s experience of discovering her own umbilical cord together with her mother. Contrary to her expectations, the umbilical cord she found had dried over time, curled and yellowed like a dried anchovy. She recalls feeling a sense of sadness at the sight. Through this work, she recreates the umbilical cord in glass—a material that never dries or decays—allowing the moment of birth to be preserved and remembered. It is as though a vanished trace of life has been given a second existence. The artist also notes that the cross-section of the umbilical cord unexpectedly resembles a face. This observation reveals both the anonymity of the fundamental structures of life and the human tendency to immediately interpret such structures through the familiar image of a “face.” The invisible systems that sustain life, and the subtle forms they produce, are reconstructed in her work through glass and ceramic, prompting renewed reflection on the boundaries between the interior and exterior of the body, and between separation and creation. The glass umbilical cord neither dries nor decays; like memory, it does not disappear. Perhaps our first encounter with the world—unseen and unwitnessed by anyone—is itself a moment of separation. Park Jungeun focuses on the ways bodily materials participate in sustaining life and maintaining biological order. Her work expands these biological processes into an exploration of the social regulations and systems of control surrounding women’s bodies and lives, examining the relationship between these two realms. Park pays particular attention to the ways in which women’s bodies are continuously evaluated and categorized according to the social standard of “fertility,” viewing the female body as something that cannot be fully explained through productivity or function alone. She focuses especially on bodily experiences that cannot be completely captured through language or concepts, revealing through them the limitations and boundaries of the social structures that define women’s bodies. Our society continues to view women’s potential for pregnancy through the lens of age, while pressures surrounding childbirth and career disruption shape and constrain women’s lives. Such standards narrow the possibilities imagined for women’s futures and often operate by anticipating and judging the possibility of failure in advance. Regardless of whether pregnancy actually occurs, the very condition of possessing a “fertile body” can itself become a constant source of temporal pressure. Modern urban systems are structured around the externalization and invisibilization of the material processes necessary for the maintenance of life. Although our bodies remain fundamentally animal and material, society pushes this materiality out of sight. Thus, female fertility is not merely a biological capacity, but something positioned within structures that assign it particular social values. These structures are also connected to urban systems, which increasingly render invisible all the material processes necessary for sustaining life—eating, excreting, caregiving, dying, and giving birth. In the past, processes such as the management of human and animal excrement, animal slaughter, and childbirth were visible parts of everyday life. Today, these processes have been hidden within factories and systems. We live without knowing how these essential processes are managed, yet our bodies remain animal bodies that continue to depend upon these biological processes, regardless of their social meanings.
![[translation] Always Transparent, Unconcealed, the Immutable “Self”](https://cdn.imweb.me/upload/S202204293a6eb15f078f5/1911d1d23912f.jpeg)
<Snail>, 2022, 유리, 13x21x22cm
![[translation] Always Transparent, Unconcealed, the Immutable “Self”](https://cdn.imweb.me/upload/S202204293a6eb15f078f5/7412f3e48eae0.jpeg)
![[translation] Always Transparent, Unconcealed, the Immutable “Self”](https://cdn.imweb.me/upload/S202204293a6eb15f078f5/463932425fda6.jpeg)
<Find Your Shell>, 2022, 유리, 도자, 25x30x12.5cm
![[translation] Always Transparent, Unconcealed, the Immutable “Self”](https://cdn.imweb.me/upload/S202204293a6eb15f078f5/dc9e39ea5fb92.jpeg)
![[translation] Always Transparent, Unconcealed, the Immutable “Self”](https://cdn.imweb.me/upload/S202204293a6eb15f078f5/bd54c3f4c34bc.jpeg)
<모낭충>, 2025, 헌 면 베갯잇, 면 실, 솜, 3D 프린팅 한 작은 인간 손, 109 x 29 x 16 cm
As discussed earlier, Park Jungeun observes the body with meticulous attention. Her subsequent experiments and works expand this inquiry into the body across a wider range of forms and subjects. She also traces the movement patterns of living organisms and investigates the remarkable diversity of the bodily organs they carry—what I prefer to call their tools. <Snail> (2022) recreates a snail in glass. The snail's movement is defined less by speed than by the act of “passing through” space and “leaving traces behind”. As its entire body repeatedly contracts and expands, secreting mucus to minimize friction with the ground, its movement becomes less an act of “locomotion” than one of producing traces. Similarly, the hermit crab in <Find Your Shell> (2022) is a creature that carries its home outside its body. Unlike the snail, however, the hermit crab's shell is not permanent but a temporary structure to be replaced. Unable to produce a hard shell of its own, it survives by borrowing discarded shells to protect its body. Its survival is a continual process of unstable adaptation. As the body grows, the shell inevitably no longer fits, and what once offered protection becomes a source of discomfort. For the hermit crab, settlement is never the goal; movement itself forms the fundamental rhythm of survival. Although the snail and the hermit crab both carry shells, they move through and occupy space in fundamentally different ways. Inadvertently, they also reshape their own habitats and those of other organisms. Through the traces they leave behind, they reveal their presence and sustain their existence. <Skin Mite (Demodex)> (2025) is made from the fabric of a pillowcase that the artist purchased from a secondhand store. She created the tiny limbs of the mites using 3D printing. Demodex mites are microscopic parasites that live on human facial skin. They are carried by everyone, quietly linking one life to another.
Park Jungeun's work is not grounded in a fixed political position or predetermined identity. Rather, it begins with the full spectrum of sensations experienced through the “body” itself. Through biological structures such as blood, the umbilical cord, and the placenta—structures that function alike regardless of race—she reveals the shared conditions of human existence and reflects on a form of being that transcends individual identities. Working with materials such as glass and fabric, Park draws objects of disgust and anxiety to the surface, creating the paradox of allowing them to be observed in forms that appear clean, stable, and safe. Glass, in particular, functions not as a symbol of fragility but as one of the most chemically stable materials, remaining both nonreactive and resistant to corrosion while simultaneously retaining an inherent sense of tension. This inquiry extends to the movement patterns and survival strategies of animals, ultimately leading to a reconsideration of the body, movement, and the very ways in which relationships are formed. In the first place, no material exists in complete separation from human. For that reason, she chooses not to turn away from anything.
2026.8. ACK 발행. ACK (artcritickorea) 글의 저작권은 필자에게 있습니다. August. 2026. Published by ACK. The copyright of the article published by ACK is owned by its author.
2026 ACK ack ack ack: Artist-Critic Matching Program
Always Transparent, Unconcealed, the Immutable “Self”
언제나 투명하게, 노골적으로, 불변의 '나': 정재연
Original text by Jaeyeon Chung
Read the original text
번역: 김미혜
Translated by Mihye Kim
My skin had been fine for a while, but now it's a mess again. Spring in New York is so dry that I am constantly coughing, and every inch of my body itches so badly that it's all I can think about. Ah! My nail. It broke again. I casually flick it onto the desk. The jagged edge of the broken nail catches against my skin and gets on my nerves. I notice these tiny discomforts so easily, yet I rarely spare a thought for the piece of nail that's fallen away.
Based in New York, artist Park Jungeun (b. 1999) explores the diverse textures and sensations encountered in everyday life, traces separated from the body, and the things we see, touch, and experience every day yet so easily overlook. Transforming these elements into glass and ceramic, she constructs a sculptural language that preserves them in fixed forms. Park is particularly interested in the traces of the body and of life that we are aware of yet habitually ignore. By merging these remnants with the immutable materiality of glass, she presents them as contemplative objects that invite reflection. She emphasizes that the subtle tactile experiences of daily life—such as repeated gestures of putting on, taking off, rolling, or gripping a ring—constitute an artistic practice in which sensation, attitude, and action are inseparably intertwined. This approach reflects her broader artistic inquiry into challenging the conventional belief that ordinary objects and materials hold no inherent artistic value. The artist also investigates materials that have separated from the body but continue to bear biological traces—hair, umbilical cords, wisdom teeth, placentas, tears, and menstrual blood—reintroducing them as visual subjects. Her works evoke specimens in which the body's interior has been preserved and solidified, rendered through smooth, polished surfaces. Through the unique properties of glass, these traces of life and the body are transformed into permanent sculptural forms. As Park writes in her artist statement: "I observe and remember the uncomfortable moments that, day after day, arrest my gaze, my thoughts, and my steps. These are scenes involving the body that we casually pass by or deliberately avert our gaze from in everyday life: a blood clot inside a raw egg, a dead rat, a pigeon limping on an infected foot, the mites that inhabit our pores."
Park Jungeun extends her conception of life beyond a human-centered hierarchy, recognizing animals as equally vital beings. The rats and pigeons commonly encountered in New York are not merely animals, but figures that reveal, in condensed form, the city’s social hierarchies, conditions of survival, and feelings of disgust. In particular, they are perceived as invisible beings that have endured within deteriorating urban systems, as marginalized forms of life inhabiting the neglected shadows of the city—unregulated and excluded. The work <Blue Death> (2024) addresses these concerns through the image of a dead rat placed upon dry earth. The artist begins with the image of a dead rat she discovered one day outside her own door. The bluish flesh and the transformation of its fur that emerge during the process of decay evoke, simultaneously, the boundaries between disgust, life, and death. She reconstitutes this image through glass, a highly refined material. At the moment when an unpleasant image is transformed into the smooth, transparent material of glass, its visual repulsiveness is removed, while paradoxically generating a more complex and layered sensory experience.
<푸른 죽음(Blue Death)>, 2024, 유리, 흙, 크레용, 15 x 5.6 x 4.3 cm
This work serves as a metaphor for beings that survive alongside humans within urban environments yet ultimately become excluded, while calling attention to life as another form of “companion” within the city. At the same time, the high density and chemical stability of glass paradoxically preserve the vitality of life, which is constantly shifting and disappearing, holding the uncontrolled energy of living matter in a sculptural state. Here, vitality exists like invisible particles, condensed in a state not yet fully revealed—like the reproductive organs of a shellfish, the yolk inside an egg, or the embryo dormant within a grain of rice. <Rice> (2025) expands this condition at the most microscopic scale. The artist enlarges a single grain of rice and reconstructs its internal “rice embryo” alongside it. The rice embryo is the part of the grain from which a new sprout emerges; biologically, it is embryonic tissue capable of developing into new life. Rather than existing as a completed form, it remains in a latent state containing infinite possibilities. Park transforms the structure of the rice embryo into the earliest stage of cellular differentiation preceding the formation of an organism, revealing that even within the everyday ingredients we consume without thought, the potential structures of life are embedded. This line of inquiry extends to the observation of the female body. The artist closely examines her own body through an almost anatomical approach, focusing on bodily parts such as reproductive organs that are socially assigned specific functions or whose functions are not fully realized. The female body exists as a structure that repeatedly enacts the rhythms of generating life while simultaneously enduring pain and discomfort throughout the process. <The Fish (decidual cast)> (2025) emerges from this embodied experience. A mass of uterine lining found within menstrual blood can take on a form resembling a fish, and the artist reconstructs this bodily trace through sculpture. The forms of the fallopian tubes on both sides of the uterus are transformed into the branching structure of a goldfish tail. This work reinterprets menstruation not simply as a biological discharge, but as a rhythm of life in which processes of creation and dissolution continually repeat.
<쌀>, 2025, 유리, 12 x 13.5 x 30 cm
<The Fish (decidual cast), 2025, 유리,17.0 × 13.7 × 3.6 cm
자궁 내막 해부학 모식도
<태반((Placenta)>, 2025, 도자(라쿠 소성), 26.7 x 25.9 x 4.8 cm
The female body exists as a state that holds the potential to generate life while simultaneously being accompanied by limitations and discomfort in everyday experience. The artist transforms this bodily condition not as a form of deficiency or loss, but as another possibility for creation. In this process, materials separated from the body do not simply disappear; instead, they remain as structures of potential capable of forming new configurations. <Placenta> (2025) faithfully recreates the placenta, the organ that connects the fetus to the maternal uterine lining. The placenta supplies the fetus with oxygen and nutrients received from the mother, protects the developing fetus, and facilitates the removal of waste products. Contrary to common assumptions, the placenta is not created solely by the mother but is formed through the developing fetus itself. Once the baby is born, the placenta completes its function and separates from the body. It is a presence that was once indispensable yet ultimately becomes a discarded remnant, abandoned after having fulfilled its vital role. The artist directly observes the placenta, researches medical texts, and traces the processes involved in the emergence of life. The vividly red, blood-like mass and the branching structures resembling blood vessels are grounded in biological reality while simultaneously evoking the wonder of the body’s hidden interior through sculptural form. This work is produced through the Raku firing technique. During the process, ceramic pieces removed from the kiln at high temperatures are rapidly cooled at a lower temperature, creating irregular cracks and scorched marks across the surface as traces of smoke and heat become embedded within the material. These material transformations visualize the instability and tension inherent in uncontrolled biological processes. To recreate the textures of the placenta and internal bodily membranes, the artist uses cabbage leaves with clearly visible veins. The work also reveals the irregular variations of color and form that continue to transform even through the process of separation from the body. With its smooth yet unfamiliar surface, the placenta exists as an organ that sustains and circulates life, while the umbilical cord connecting the fetus and placenta recalls the most primal structure of union between two bodies that have not yet been separated.
<탯줄(Umbilical Cord)>, 2025, 유리, 28.2 x 2.3 x 3.6 cm
탯줄 실물 사진과 조직 단면도
<Umbilical Cord> (2025) emerges from the artist’s experience of discovering her own umbilical cord together with her mother. Contrary to her expectations, the umbilical cord she found had dried over time, curled and yellowed like a dried anchovy. She recalls feeling a sense of sadness at the sight. Through this work, she recreates the umbilical cord in glass—a material that never dries or decays—allowing the moment of birth to be preserved and remembered. It is as though a vanished trace of life has been given a second existence. The artist also notes that the cross-section of the umbilical cord unexpectedly resembles a face. This observation reveals both the anonymity of the fundamental structures of life and the human tendency to immediately interpret such structures through the familiar image of a “face.” The invisible systems that sustain life, and the subtle forms they produce, are reconstructed in her work through glass and ceramic, prompting renewed reflection on the boundaries between the interior and exterior of the body, and between separation and creation. The glass umbilical cord neither dries nor decays; like memory, it does not disappear. Perhaps our first encounter with the world—unseen and unwitnessed by anyone—is itself a moment of separation. Park Jungeun focuses on the ways bodily materials participate in sustaining life and maintaining biological order. Her work expands these biological processes into an exploration of the social regulations and systems of control surrounding women’s bodies and lives, examining the relationship between these two realms. Park pays particular attention to the ways in which women’s bodies are continuously evaluated and categorized according to the social standard of “fertility,” viewing the female body as something that cannot be fully explained through productivity or function alone. She focuses especially on bodily experiences that cannot be completely captured through language or concepts, revealing through them the limitations and boundaries of the social structures that define women’s bodies. Our society continues to view women’s potential for pregnancy through the lens of age, while pressures surrounding childbirth and career disruption shape and constrain women’s lives. Such standards narrow the possibilities imagined for women’s futures and often operate by anticipating and judging the possibility of failure in advance. Regardless of whether pregnancy actually occurs, the very condition of possessing a “fertile body” can itself become a constant source of temporal pressure. Modern urban systems are structured around the externalization and invisibilization of the material processes necessary for the maintenance of life. Although our bodies remain fundamentally animal and material, society pushes this materiality out of sight. Thus, female fertility is not merely a biological capacity, but something positioned within structures that assign it particular social values. These structures are also connected to urban systems, which increasingly render invisible all the material processes necessary for sustaining life—eating, excreting, caregiving, dying, and giving birth. In the past, processes such as the management of human and animal excrement, animal slaughter, and childbirth were visible parts of everyday life. Today, these processes have been hidden within factories and systems. We live without knowing how these essential processes are managed, yet our bodies remain animal bodies that continue to depend upon these biological processes, regardless of their social meanings.
<Snail>, 2022, 유리, 13x21x22cm
<Find Your Shell>, 2022, 유리, 도자, 25x30x12.5cm
<모낭충>, 2025, 헌 면 베갯잇, 면 실, 솜, 3D 프린팅 한 작은 인간 손, 109 x 29 x 16 cm
As discussed earlier, Park Jungeun observes the body with meticulous attention. Her subsequent experiments and works expand this inquiry into the body across a wider range of forms and subjects. She also traces the movement patterns of living organisms and investigates the remarkable diversity of the bodily organs they carry—what I prefer to call their tools. <Snail> (2022) recreates a snail in glass. The snail's movement is defined less by speed than by the act of “passing through” space and “leaving traces behind”. As its entire body repeatedly contracts and expands, secreting mucus to minimize friction with the ground, its movement becomes less an act of “locomotion” than one of producing traces. Similarly, the hermit crab in <Find Your Shell> (2022) is a creature that carries its home outside its body. Unlike the snail, however, the hermit crab's shell is not permanent but a temporary structure to be replaced. Unable to produce a hard shell of its own, it survives by borrowing discarded shells to protect its body. Its survival is a continual process of unstable adaptation. As the body grows, the shell inevitably no longer fits, and what once offered protection becomes a source of discomfort. For the hermit crab, settlement is never the goal; movement itself forms the fundamental rhythm of survival. Although the snail and the hermit crab both carry shells, they move through and occupy space in fundamentally different ways. Inadvertently, they also reshape their own habitats and those of other organisms. Through the traces they leave behind, they reveal their presence and sustain their existence. <Skin Mite (Demodex)> (2025) is made from the fabric of a pillowcase that the artist purchased from a secondhand store. She created the tiny limbs of the mites using 3D printing. Demodex mites are microscopic parasites that live on human facial skin. They are carried by everyone, quietly linking one life to another.
Park Jungeun's work is not grounded in a fixed political position or predetermined identity. Rather, it begins with the full spectrum of sensations experienced through the “body” itself. Through biological structures such as blood, the umbilical cord, and the placenta—structures that function alike regardless of race—she reveals the shared conditions of human existence and reflects on a form of being that transcends individual identities. Working with materials such as glass and fabric, Park draws objects of disgust and anxiety to the surface, creating the paradox of allowing them to be observed in forms that appear clean, stable, and safe. Glass, in particular, functions not as a symbol of fragility but as one of the most chemically stable materials, remaining both nonreactive and resistant to corrosion while simultaneously retaining an inherent sense of tension. This inquiry extends to the movement patterns and survival strategies of animals, ultimately leading to a reconsideration of the body, movement, and the very ways in which relationships are formed. In the first place, no material exists in complete separation from human. For that reason, she chooses not to turn away from anything.
2026.8. ACK 발행. ACK (artcritickorea) 글의 저작권은 필자에게 있습니다. August. 2026. Published by ACK. The copyright of the article published by ACK is owned by its author.