Movie nonetheless from a multimedia work by Yaloo (picture courtesy Rip House)
LOS ANGELES — Probably the most profitable pirate in historical past was a girl. Zheng Yi Sao, energetic within the South China Sea between 1801 and 1810, took possession of her husband’s Crimson Flag Fleet after he died in 1807. Over the following three years, she efficiently fought off advances by British, Portuguese, and Chinese language armadas. In 1810, Zheng negotiated a take care of the Chinese language authorities that granted her amnesty, permitting her to maintain her bounty and retire peacefully from piracy.
The legacy of Zheng and feminine buccaneering impressed Yaloo’s exhibition Shininho DOCKING, on view at Rip House, an art-meets-tech area in downtown Los Angeles that reveals new media work. Yaloo’s protagonist is a fictional character named Shininho. This 86-year-old Ok-pop idol captains a pirate ship navigating the Pacific Rim, which marks the historic commerce route between Korea and California. The character’s bodily type is modeled after full-body scans of the artist’s grandmother, dropped at life by way of MetaHuman 3D animation.
Set up view of Shininho DOCKING (photograph by Sigourney Schultz/ Hyperallergic)
The immersive set up encompasses dancing holograms of Shininho, vertical screens projecting undulating dreamscapes, and industrial redwood pillars that resemble good-luck shrines adorning East Asian ship docks. This presentation marks a “stop” alongside Shininho’s journey, which can proceed because the exhibition travels all through the USA and Korea. The area is bathed in a soundscape created by Yetsuby, which clinks and clanks to the beat of an underwater rave. In “Data Bank” (all works 2024), a big display screen initiatives a looped video of Shininho swimming by way of a scanned rendering of Yaloo’s grandmother’s residence, adorned together with her private objects. A spindly thread of nerves linked on a DNA chain spawns new Shininhos, which float and swim off as their abdomens inflate like balloons. In entrance of this display screen is “Ending Fairy,” a big hologram of Shininho wearing a shiny pink bodysuit embellished with punchy model logos. A movement seize efficiency mapped onto the digital determine creates the impact of Shininho dancing excitedly in opposition to a digital panorama that recollects Yaloo’s hometown of Incheon, a port metropolis on the coronary heart of South Korea’s industrialization.
What reminiscences does Shininho’s new digital physique maintain that Yaloo’s grandmother’s physique leaves behind? Yaloo’s multimedia work tackles these concerns by addressing the intersection of human and non-human consciousness, difficult the hole between technological development and historical non secular practices. In “Shininho Opening Number,” a big monitor leaning in opposition to the wall initiatives scrolling strains of Korean and English textual content, which quote from Leonora Carrington’s 1944 guide Down Beneath: “In the distant future, I descended as the third future of a trinity. Through the providence of the sun, I left myself as hermaphrodite, moon, spirit, gypsy, acrobat, Leonora Carrington, and a woman.” This inclusion from Carrington’s memoir paints an image of Yaloo’s “third future,” which honors the transformative qualities of the getting old physique and reimagines the legacy of maritime girls, akin to Zheng Yi Sao.
Set up view of Shininho DOCKING (photograph by Sigourney Schultz/ Hyperallergic)
Set up views of Shininho DOCKING (photograph by Sigourney Schultz/ Hyperallergic)
Shininho Docking continues at Rip House (1250 Lengthy Seaside Avenue #326, Los Angeles, California) by way of February 9. The exhibition was curated by Vera Petukhova.