‘A Machine Replaces Human Labour’: Pulling Back the Petals of Rachel Youn’s Mutated Massagers

There is a strangely erotic relationship between the artificial flowers and modified household devices that form Korean American artist Rachel Youn’s kinetic sculptures. For Writhe (2026), Youn has adapted a neck massager so that it jitters and moves out of sync. Rotating chrome posts clipped to the edges of an artificial pink anthurium enable the flower to “dance” seductively with the movement of the machine. A swathe of heart-shaped waxy petals surround an erect central spadix whose tip has been weighed down by a dangling piercing, with crystalline droplets spilling over the edge of the petals. As the massager’s posts move in circular motions, the anthurium is folded and stretched open, over and over again.

As hypnotic and suggestive as the gyrating flora is, Youn’s focus is on the machine. Based in New Mexico, they collect second-hand massage and wellness machines and give them life anew. In a spring 2026 two-person exhibition—Factory Doomscroll, at Night Gallery in Los Angeles (with Christine Tien Wang)—and Youn’s latest solo show, Unruly Vessel at Scuola Piccola Zattere in Venice, the modified instruments are dressed up by the artist in children’s roller skates, adorned with bows, or else given Youn’s signature flowers to go to town on. These moving sculptural installations might be animated by machines but, in Youn’s hands, they elicit a deeper, more human question: what happens to us when we no longer serve our assumed or self-determined relational function?

XY Zhou: Your current exhibition in Venice, which came out of a residency in the city, explores your encounters with a history of coercion and religion when making this work. How did this come about?

Rachel Youn: While I was on the residency, I ended up taking a trip to a Venetian island called San Servolo where there is a museum in what used to be an “insane asylum”. It was a psychiatric institution from the 1700s and, before that, a monastery. There’s something about the isolation of islands and monasteries, and also prisons. I think there is a relationship between “madness” and religion. In the San Marco basin there was a prison ship, the Pubblica Fusta, that was moored near the land where everybody could see it. The prisoners lived there. The ship has no masts, and it was used to train prisoners to row because rowing was a [punitive] sentence. Then they also started putting mentally unwell people on that ship. And then they also started putting sick people on the ship. So, there was an association with this ship—of madness, sickness and criminalisation. 

XYZ: How did your research inspire the exhibition? 

RY: Congregation (2026), the central piece, imitates the rowing prisoners on the Pubblica Fusta. Modified electrical bike machines are set atop several rows of benches and artificial palms extend from each machine, like oars. The palms are a reference to Palm Sunday. The machines are modified so that the palms move synchronously, as opposed to paddling. There is a feeling of perpetual exercise. There are more references to restraint, shaking, craziness and how madness has been understood in this archaic way throughout the show. The piece is half existential rowing and half liturgical celebration of a saviour figure, but to me, it’s like nothing is happening. There’s all this energy being spent but it’s not going towards anything. 

XYZ: What is your approach to making the mechanical installations in your work?

RY: There are two ways that I do modifications. The machines are supposed to be symmetrical in their movements, like a massage, but I open it up and adjust the gears to find that riding motion that I’m looking for. I also can control the speed a little bit and dial the exact voltage that I want. The other way I modify them is by direct power, rewiring some of them. A lot of machines like this have a 10- to 15-minute timer shut-off mechanism in them; they aren’t supposed to run for that long. I’m forcing them to move beyond their capacity. 

“There’s all this energy being spent but it’s not going towards anything”

XYZ: The massagers have an intimacy with the body of whoever used them before, and how they carry that function with them.

RY: The way I see it, a machine replaces human labour. Instead of being massaged by a masseuse, you get a massage from the machine. If it turns off, you just turn it back on. It circumvents social relationships because, ultimately, when you do something with another person, that person has to stop at some point. The machine is an expendable resource at the end of the day, but it has this ability to continue. 

XYZ: Where do you take inspiration from?

RY: My inspiration comes from interactions with people. I think the deepest roots of my work are to do with love and the relationships of women in the household. I’m interested in the expectations put on somebody, as if they were a machine, to do the same thing over and over again. The way that relationships fall apart when they become capitalistic, or when people treat each other like assets as opposed to people. What happens when somebody falls ill, or goes “crazy”, and they don’t perform the same role for you socially as they did before? What happens to love then? 

XYZ: I can definitely see the eroticism in your work, but is there also a tortuous aspect to it? 

RY: Yeah. I love putting contradictions together and seeing people’s reactions to it. Some people respond with: “This is really hypnotic and calming,” while others are, like: “This is really horrible to look at.” Perfect. The motions themselves are uncanny, too. They move in an organic-ish way because the machines themselves are designed to mimic human motion, but they’re moving a little bit too fast to be natural. I was interested more broadly in tropical or exotic flowers. I think they add artifice, like capturing something from far away that isn’t supposed to be here. This is especially true as I’ve gone from working with stems to individual flowers, and orchids and anthuriums are very bodily. 

XYZ: You’re back in New Mexico now—how has that affected your work?

RY: I’ve been looking at the human and narrative aspects of plants. Back in the desert, I’ve been thinking about the death blooms of agave plants. They spend 10 to 40 years growing and then shoot out this beautiful spike to pollinate once. This is their last act. Next, I want to make a work about dying through reproduction. —[O]

Rachel Youn, Unruly Vessel (until 18 October) at Scuola Piccola Zattere, Venice.

Main image: Making of Unruly Vessel, by Rachel Youn at Scuola Piccola Zattere, Venice (7th May — 18th October, 2026). Photo: Giacomo Bianco.