Babel: Slippage Translation
2026digital print, perfect binding
148x210mm (72p)
Since arriving in the Netherlands, I have realised that even none of us share the same native language, we can understand each other's hearts through an imperfect language.
From this, I started this to render one Chinese poem with only a dictionary to make one relay translation, without any AI translator. I anticipated we could make one cycle together, even if it would be clumsy, though. It then passed through several participants: Modern Chinese to Korean, Korean to English, English to Mandarin, Mandarin to English, and English to Korean.
The book was made with four collaborators across Korean, Japanese and Chinese language backgrounds, each taking a turn in the relay.
All images in the book come from digital scans of potato plants and potato crops that I collected by hand.
It was shown at KEL-30 in Groningen, and will be shown at Bring Your Own Books Fair 2026 in Amsterdam.
Chips from the Earth
2025-2026
potato ash pigment on carved jelutong wood relief
30x20x2 cm (x9)
At the start of material research, I began researching potato materiality but did not want to stay purely conceptual,
so I carved nine potato chip packages in jelutong wood collected from classmates across different countries.
However, still I thought I should find materiality of potatoes more and more. So I tried to approach the various aspects of potatoes. I found potato-as-pigment recipes. I mixed ground potato skin and flesh ash with gesso and cellulose.
During this material research, I found the decay smell of the potato, various types of humidity, taste, and colours of potatoes.
These series were exhibited at Kel-30 in Groningen.
Plain, Ordinary, Tuber, And Transplanted Object
2026
cold-forge and plasma cut steel plates, handmade potato paper with five potato varieties
70×104×2 cm
While tracing the history of the potato, I came across Carolus Clusius's sixteenth century drawing of the plant.
Before I began this research and grew potatoes myself, I had never thought about how they sit buried in the soil. Looking at the clusters formed among the branching roots, I was reminded of Haizi's poem, which I had translated. Soft and starchy as they are, the potato's tubers have become for me a metaphor for tenacious vitality.
This was exhibited at Kel-30 in Groningen.
A Chip of It
2026
gouache and poked with a tattoo needle on carved jelutong wood relief, polaroid film
35×25×2 cm (x2)
I began to track potato history. I traveled Brussels, Paris, and Dublin. I took Polaroid films and videos in the trip, and I visited places related to potato history in Europe and popular fries restaurants.
During this trip, I did not focus on only potato, and I have thought about immigration and mixture of culture, because it’s a very universal and common history. So, I wrote short writings in my trip, and I picked up some of them.
1st Writing
Thinking about potatoes every day, I started to recall the first image of potato in my own life. It was probably the winter of 2000. I was maybe four or five. My dad was working in Guangzhou, China, and it was my mom’s birthday. I had a terrible ear infection, and I threw up every time I ate, so I was only eating rice porridge—what Koreans eat when we’re sick.
While I sat there hungry with just bland pot porridge, the smell of birthday food was too tempting, like chocolate cream cake and spicy Korean chicken stew. The smell of chicken stew especially was crazy. My mom felt sorry for me, so she cut a tiny piece of potato from the stew and put it on my rice bowl. The tiny piece, soaked in spicy sauce and chicken broth flavor—it was amazing. Maybe I think this food is my unforgettable food in my whole life. But it was buried in my memories, in the deep side of my mind, and finally, I discovered it.
2nd Writing
I ate a spice bag in Dublin. It is a Chinese-style fries. I think about foods like that that belong to more than one country, like Russian carrot kimchi and California roll.
3rd Writing
A surprising discovery. While talking on the phone with my mom, I found out that people of her generation—especially those who grew up in Seoul—actually treasure potato and love them, because potatoes grow in the mountains of Gangwon Province and were not easy to find in the city in the '60s and '70s.
I believed that potatoes were conventional, common food for poor people after the Korean War. So, where did my negative feeling about them come from? Was it something from the media? Was I brainwashed, or did I brainwash myself? And why am I ashamed of poverty? And is poverty something to be ashamed of?
4th Writing
On the plane, I heard a baby’s voice so loud I thought my ears would burst. Then I thought, maybe she is not talking, but crying. In Korean, the sounds animals make are described with the verb "to cry." Why did we think animals were crying? In one essay, a Korean writer said that cicadas cry, but a French child who was listening said, "No, cicadas sing."
5th Writing
Finding Parmentier’s grave took a very long time. After maybe 40 minutes of wandering, I finally found his tombstone with potatoes placed on it. I also put down one potato I had brought from the Netherlands, so so for him.
Looking at the tombstone preserved so well for so long, or at the big old trees, or at the grand old buildings with long histories, I think about the time that has disappeared in Korea. Our traditional graves on family hillsides moved to Japanese-style cremation during colonial rule, and then to the columbarium walls we have today. I think it is a reasonable choice because our land is too small, but sometimes I just imagine the time we lost.
6th Writing
Without anyone knowing, I placed a Dutch potato inside a locker at a train station in Brussels.
7th Writing
I am always a stranger here, so why do I not want to look like a tourist? I know I won’t be a person who belongs to here.
8th Writing
At a gate in Dublin Airport, I secretly hid a potato.