Page 84 - PhotoView Issue21

Sparkling Entity, Jung-eun Kim’s Glitter Moment

by CHOI Yeonha, Curator and Critic, Photography

Jung-eun Kim has made her comeback! It has been 12 years since her last solo exhibition, By Myself in 2002.

It took quite a while for her to come out through a long tunnel. While her By Myself is about herself with her
family and friends juxtaposed in a single 35mm frame, Glitter Moment is about her avatar. Her earlier interest

in ‘self’ resurfaces in this work. Once again she deals with the everyday. The series shows a self and its avatar
or alter-ego are engaged in mundane activities like eating, sleeping, watching TV, and drinking tea in daily-life

settings. The artist’s private room is the most familiar space and the center of the universe, from which her
individuality originates. Not bounded by the now and here, the imaginary and real self expand endlessly and

then come back to home. This is what the narcissus born out of a self keeps doing.

The alter ego of Jung-eun, is a spangled sculpture. Why spangles, out of numerous mundane choices? The
material, which shines like fish scales, is too delicate to handle, and appears to be sleek but prickly and flexible

but hard, is reminiscent of a tangible but ungraspable object of love. However, the beloved spangle piece is
only the reflection of her self. The avatar of spangled styrofoam sculpture eats and sleeps like ‘me’. None-

theless, there is a difference between the spangle-woman and I-artist: the former is an everyday but immortal
being. It takes at least 2 or 3 weeks for the artist to put spangles. Like endless knitting of Penelope, the artist

waits patiently for one moment of completion, dreaming of a birth of a new doppelganger.

Eating-One in Blue, Sitting-on Sofa-One in Green, Sleeping-One in Gold, Walking-One in Red……. Two entities,
mirroring each other, are situated in such an odd time zone as photography, which keeps them coming back

down. In occupying her life, irrevocable and uniquely artist’s own, the artist is comforted by her she-spangle
avatar, though at times, her avatar appears to be bigger and more beautiful than the I-artist, and it revolves

around the artist like an echo. Sometimes, the avatar takes a lead, other times, I-artist can move it around.
They see and attract each other like two poles in a magnetic field. The self and alter-ego are needy of each

other through a constant process of assimilation and dissimilation. “A living self in order to construct a unique
ego and to identify it with the self inevitably internalizes the other.” (Jacques Derrida, Spectres de Marx, trans-

lated by Taewon Jin, 2007, p.275) The artist’s avatar is her indivisible, internal self, and her subconscious other.
Owe to this alter-ego, artist’s daily life can turn into glitter moments. The reason why she is making her avatar

withstanding stiff shoulders and numb legs reveals the artist’s yearn for turning emptiness of fleeting moments
into special time that cannot be consolidated with anything. If time in an ordinary sense is understood as a

flow from yesterday to tomorrow, the time that Jung-eun spends in putting spangles provides her with a room
to remain within and look into herself, and remains still with spangle pieces. So does a photograph. A moment

captured in a photo stays permanent. Jung-eun Kim’s photographing with her avatar (though it may be dreamy
or fantasy-like) may be derived from her desire to maintain her own photograph-space. In the end, the two