Fold (2025)

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Fold (2025) harks back to a specific childhood memory; moments when Dohyun Baek’s parents would argue and his mother would leave the family home soon thereafter. Left alone in the kitchen, his father often grilled seaweed in a meditative fashion over an open flame. In solidarity, Dohyun joined him at the table for an impromptu kimbab-making session in what would manifest as a simple, honest fare, and a poignant offering of duty, care, and the residual pain of the night before.

This memory resurfaced during Dohyun’s exploration of male vulnerability. At its core, his Fold project drew upon a body of paintings in which the testicle took center stage; an overtly masculine feature that retains a nurturing softness in its capacity to carry potential progeny. During a landmark residency period, Dohyun probed the essence of the eponymous fold, from the act of doubling over and the gesture of two surfaces meeting, to the sense of sanctuary that echoed medieval paintings of the sheepfold as a place of care in the face of chaos and rupture. These experiments returned Dohyun to the kitchen, to the manner in which rice and seaweed paper held together precariously as if dwelling in the tension of the fold.

Having been privileged a unique stage in a church loft to work on, Dohyun moved to realize a performance using soy sauce as paint and his body as paintbrush. His practice questioned the fallacy of perfectionism and the subject of error, all the while exposing familial shortcomings at the intersection of conflict and affection.

He started with a series of dry performances, playing around with a variety of heavy, slow, and progressively faster movements while waiting for the soy to arrive and the Hanji paper to go up on stage. With little to no formal training as a performer, he relied upon the expertise of performance artist Sarah White, who so graciously supported him as he thought through the choreography as well as the layers of meaning contained within his movements and gestures.

MorpheArts25. Photograph Courtesy of BJ Deakin Photography.

Fold (2025). Performance. Soy Sauce, PVC, Steel Pipe, and Hanji. Photography Courtesy of the Artist. I

Fold (2025). Performance. Soy Sauce, PVC, Steel Pipe, and Hanji. Photography Courtesy of the Artist. II

Fold (2025). Performance. Soy Sauce, PVC, Steel Pipe, and Hanji. Photography Courtesy of the Artist. III.

Fold (2025). Performance. Soy Sauce, PVC, Steel Pipe, and Hanji. Photography Courtesy of the Artist. IV.

Fold (2025). Performance. Soy Sauce, PVC, Steel Pipe, and Hanji. Photography Courtesy of the Artist. V.

Residue (2026). Soy Sauce and Wax on Hanji. 117 x 127 cm. Photograph Courtesy of the Artist. II.

Residue (2026). Soy Sauce and Wax on Hanji. 117 x 127 cm. Photograph Courtesy of the Artist. I.

The first performance took place with videographer Jim Mangles present. Irrespective of the preparation involved, it was impossible to predict the flow and spread of the soy as it blurred his vision, stung his face, and crept spontaneously into every crevice of his person. The live performance was a private affair, during which the soy seemed to fall differently upon freshly layered sheets of Hanji under the audience’s more intimate gaze. To finish, Dohyun exited the stage and sat at a small table with a bowl of rice and seasoned seaweed paper before handing out rice balls to spectators so they too could experience a taste of his childhood memory.

Audience members, friends included, have expressed feeling a certain discomfort and wonder during the performance as if bearing witness to, and even invading Dohyun’s sacred space. In those moments, they experienced Dohyun’s stage nerves vicariously, channeling his emergent blindness and raw vulnerability in what would become an essential part of the creative process.