k-art in Munich
Chase the shadows before the light goes out with Eunju Hong.
When Eunju Hong moved to Munich, her relationship with time began to fracture. She viewed each day through the lens of a double-exposure, mapping unfamiliar geography alongside the emotional architecture of homes gone by.
Her journey began at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, under the mentorship of Julian Rosefeldt. For a solo filmmaker, the academy offered access to talented peers and creative communities with whom to project visions on a larger scale. Yet, even as her networks expanded, an inner turn took root. With the scene buzzing around her, Eunju mused existentially about the limits of human desire in a complex and transient world.
Saturated with promises of high-tech immortality, Eunju 3D-scanned her own face before experimenting with printing techniques to develop a proxy body. This data-rendered twin exuded diasporic anxiety, occupying one space while the living, breathing self continued to live, crave, and aspire in another.
This fascination with forbidden fruit ripened during Annagreen (2023), a group exhibition held at Kunstarkaden. Skipping the razzle dazzle of Munich’s Marienplatz, Eunju wandered into a quaint antique store where a curious piece of uranium broke her heart. This terrifying shard epitomized our capacity to covet beautiful, glowing objects, even if they carry the violent, radioactive traumas of the atomic bomb. In the aftermath of the event, she turned her gaze to hidden narratives of loneliness and loss, as well as the traces left behind by those on the absolute margins of society.
With support from the City of Munich, Eunju secured a much-needed residency in the misty mountains of Taiwan. Located on the cusp of a temple dedicated to Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy, she relished the joys of Taiwanese puppetry.
A puppet is a vessel animated by another’s hand. When the puppeteer dies, the tradition fades into obscurity. Meandering through dusty, rural nooks, Eunju sought to capture the last vestiges of traditional puppet theater in Korea and Japan, a research trajectory that culminated in the magnificent, two-channel video installation Shadow Play (2025).
True to form, Eunju’s strings continue to be pulled across borders, with her next body of work taking place in one of Seoul’s oldest remaining theaters. Here, she will bring her Munich-based practice to a setting where memories of early adulthood abound, once again striving to catch the shadows before the light goes out.
