Let them Finish the Cake, 2023
Yeonsu Ju, born in 1995, South Korea. She lives and works in London.
Yeonsu Ju lives among the spirits. As she herself explains: « I take inspiration from 'Gijesa', a spiritual ritual practiced in Korea as a way for Koreans mourn for the deceased. It is a Confucian memorial rite held to honour the ancestors at the earliest hour on the anniversary of their death with food offerings prepared the day before. »
By representing herself as the host of these imaginary dinners, Yeunsu Ju does much more than simply honor her loved ones: she creates a portrait of them through her own image, projecting their existences and energies onto her own face.
Yet Yeunsu Ju's relationship with these departed beings remains conflicted. As the subject of the dinner, she keeps interrupting the meal through unconventional means, making it impossible for her characters to leave. In this way, she turns each scene into a ritual that never ends, like an emotional and material spiral. Yeunsu Ju's spiraling energy is reminiscent of Bacon's painting and the movements by which the artist blends his subjects into the background.
Yeunsu Ju is part of the Nixon Collection as well as other important private collections in Australia, China, France, South Korea, Taiwan and United Kingdom. She is a winner of the RGI New Graduate Award 2021. Her work is shortlisted for RBA Rome scholarship awards 2022, Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2021 and others.