Korean Artist Han Suji Expands Her Fictional World

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Han’s recent solo exhibition at CR Collective expands upon the universe of ‘Bitchondria’, an extra-dimensional hybrid life form combining the traits of qubits, mitochondria, and superstrings.

With a keen interest in the relationship between physical and digital spaces, Korean artist Han Suji’s pseudoscientific video, sound, media installation, and three-dimensional practice focuses on the reproducibility of digital space, the boundaries between living beings and machines, and the processes of translation and misinterpretation that occur in the interaction between digital space and the living.

In her recent solo exhibition, Eye See the World- Good AfterNOON (13 June–27 July, 2024) at CR Collective in Seoul, Han realised her fictional world of ‘Bitchondria’, a virtual entity she first introduced in 2022 at Seoul Museum of Art‘s Grid Island.

Bitchondria combines the properties of a superstring that can travel between the macroscopic and microscopic worlds and the properties of mitochondria that are essential to human evolution.

In her 2023 exhibition Jellyfish Juice and Bitchondria, Bitchondria evolves through the absorption of Green Fluorescent Protein 1, found in jellyfish. With the capacity for unlimited reproduction and infinite energy production, it traverses time and space without borders, dismantling the artificiality between digital and nature and awakening the equality of different objects.

Her most recent work examines newly emerged species and previously unseen entities that have become visible post-visualisation, expanding her fictional universe by examining their transformed eyes.

Subin Lee is Assistant Curator at CR Collective.

Main image: Installation view: Han Suji, Bitchondria(xⁿ,yⁿ,zⁿ), Seoul Museum of Art(SeMA), Seoul (26 May-15 August, 2022). Courtesy the artist.