Rise, 2025
Yeonsu Ju, born in 1995,South Korea. She lives and works in London and Seoul.
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 to 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, Yeonsu 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 Yeonsu Ju's relationship with these departed beings remains conflicted. In the course 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. Yeonsu Ju's spiraling energy is reminiscent of Bacon's painting and the movements by which the artist blends his subjects into the background.
Yeonsu Ju is part of the Nixon Collection as well as other important private collections in Australia, China, France, South Korea 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.
By representing herself as the host of these imaginary dinners, Yeonsu 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 Yeonsu Ju's relationship with these departed beings remains conflicted. In the course 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. Yeonsu Ju's spiraling energy is reminiscent of Bacon's painting and the movements by which the artist blends his subjects into the background.
Yeonsu Ju is part of the Nixon Collection as well as other important private collections in Australia, China, France, South Korea 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.