MUL BANG UL 
 
2025, installation
nagelhaut (masks) 01 – 03: artificial fingernails, glitter stones, 225 × 155 × 100 mm (each)
Mul-Bang-Ul (artificial tears): two speakers, subwoofer, bench; 18 minutes
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MUL BANG UL consists of nagelhaut (masks) 01 – 03 and Mul-Bang-Ul (artificial tears): three masks composed of hundreds of artificial fingernails, and a sound piece without beginning or end. Each fingernail is applied individually, layered into a rigid, scale-like surface, accumulating into a dense skin through repetition. Glitter stones occupy the position of the eyes, breaking the surface where the gaze would otherwise be found. Nagelhaut is the German word for cuticle, that thin protective layer of skin which exists to protect the still growing, not yet hardened part of the nail. It is a boundary continuously worked on, pushed back, trimmed, regulated, especially when wearing artificial nails. This tension is inscribed into the masks: their surface can be read simultaneously as protection and as regulation, as care and as control.
Mul-Bang-Ul (artificial tears) is built from layered voices and recordings. My own voice appears in Korean, spoken with hesitation and misunderstanding. I speak a language I cannot fully hold. My recordings from a haenyeo performance at Seongsang Ilchulbong Beach on Jeju Island surface alongside it. The sounds do not align into dialogue. At times, a fragment of Coldplay's The Scientist drifts through, familiar and detached, reduced to a loop of chords. Voice does not belong to a singular subject, but emerges between bodies, recordings, environments, and histories. The bench, the speakers, the empty projection –  the room is a stage set for an encounter that has already taken place, somewhere else, once again. 

Exhibition views: MMCA Residency Goyang Open Studio 21. MMCA Residency Goyang (KR)
Photos: Hong Cheolki, Courtesy of National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea