Siren Eun Young Jung

siren eun young jung (, born in 1974 in Incheon, South Korea) is a South Korean contemporary artist working in video, performance, installation, and photography. The Seoul-based artist explores issues around gender and sexuality in relation to Korean history, politics, and culture through long-term research projects. Her work is often centered on figures or artistic practices effaced or excluded from conventional archives.

Education jung was trained as a painter for her BFA and MFA at Ewha Womans University, where she became involved in the feminist movement on campus, and began going by the name “siren eun young jung” in 1994. Part of the impetus for changing her name was her desire to remove the possibility of others determining her gender, ethnicity, and class background based on her name. After graduating with her BFA in 1997 and MFA in 2000 from Ewha, she went on to work with art historian Griselda Pollock for her MA in Feminist Theory and Practice in the Visual Arts at the University of Leeds. She completed her MA in 2004 with a thesis titled "Women Between Nation and Diaspora in the Era of Globalisation." jung then returned to Ewha to write a dissertation titled “The Politics of Gender and the Aesthetics of Dissensus: With a Focus on the Yeoseong Gukgeuk Project,” graduating in 2015 with a Doctorate in Fine Arts. Cho Duckhyun and Kim Hyunjoo supervised jung's dissertation.

Work Throughout her career, jung has engaged with feminist issues in her artistic practice. Her early work in video, photography, and installation often deals with gendered violence and figures on the social periphery. and emphasizes the need to push the boundaries of typical art practices. jung has cited a range of scholars as influences on her work, including Judith Butler, Jasbir K. Puar, and Susan Sontag. as well as lack of institutional support that was predominately directed instead to male performers as a part of Park Chung Hee's efforts to modernize the country, led to yeoseong gukgeuk's decline in popularity.

jung was interested in a similar genre of theater in Japan called takarazuka when she was young, but did not learn about yeoseong gukgeuk until 2008. and challenge the parameters of visibility. The second part of the work is a 15-minute single-channel video showing Nam, in contrast to the public performance that had a full audience, alone on stage and backstage. The first part of the installation consisted of three monitors installed at the entrance of the Korean Pavilion showing yeoseong gugeuk actor Lee Deungwoo applying makeup in a theater and performing pansori. The main installation featured a single-channel video projected onto three walls in a 5 x 5 x 4 meter space. The video centers on four performers: actor Yii Lee, Azangman, director of the Disabled Women's Theater Group "Dancing Waist" Seo Jiwon, and electronic musician KIRARA. jung describes the work as an "imaginative genealogy" outside of Western epistemological structures. jung says that the title is a reference to her intentional incorporation and exaggeration of elements typically frowned upon in video art.

Selected exhibitions

Solo exhibitions 2006 - "The Wandering Diseases," brainfactory, Seoul

2007 - "The Passenger," Traveler's Book project, Seoul

2010 - "Rehearsal," Platform SlowRush, Songdo International city, Incheon

2015 - "Trans-Theatre," Art Space Pool, Seoul

2016 - "Wrong Indexing," Sindoh Art Gallery, Seoul

2016 - "Anomalous Fantasy (Staging)," Season Program, Namsan Art Center, Seoul

2017 - "Wrong Indexing," NTU CCA Singapore, Singapore

2018 - "foolish or mannish," d/p, Seoul

Group exhibitions 2014 - "Tradition (Un)Realized, Arko Art Center, Seoul

2014 - "Ghosts, Spies, and Grandmothers, SeMA Biennale Mediacity Seoul, Seoul

2014 - 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, QAGOMA, Brisbane

2015/2016 - "Discordant Harmony," Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima

2016 - "The 8th Climate: The 7th Gwangju Biennale," Gwangju

2018 - Taipei Biennial, Taipei

2018 - "Proregress," Shanghai Biennial, Shanghai

2014/2018 - TPAM (Performing Arts Meeting in Yokohama), Yokohama

2018 - "Out of Turn," Serendipity Art Festival, Goa

2018 - "Korea Artist Prize 2018," National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), Seoul

2019 - "History Has Failed Us, but No Matter," Korea Pavilion, 58th Venice Biennale, Venice

Awards 2013 - Hermès Foundation Missulsang Prize

2015 - Sindoh Art Prize

2018 - Korea Artist Prize