k-art in Munich
Catch the invisible particles passing through our fingertips with Jiwon Song.
As an international student, Jiwon Song experienced Munich as a magnificent yet impenetrable affair. She set her sights on cultural melting pots, but found instead a stubborn resistance to change. Whether explaining her art in a foreign tongue or drilling new techniques in the echo chamber of a lonely apartment, even mundane tasks felt like mountains to climb.
The need to bleed into an elite inner circle was akin to lugging around an oversized artwork of epic, Atlas-like proportions. Over time, the pressure of overseas expectations and rejections perforated holes of vulnerability within, the only antidote for which was a rapid descent into slowness.
Jiwon’s installation, 7 Legs (2023), marked her first foray into three-dimensional outdoor sculpture. These unconventional, unashamedly lethargic creatures refused to adapt to the frantic pace of the German art market. Instead, they materialized another version of Jiwon, a hybrid side with enough leg-room to rest briefly in the rare stillness of everyday life.
Jiwon turns her back on rigid academic methods, opting to teach herself sculptural techniques via YouTube cosplay prop and costume tutorials. She also frequents local flea markets and recycling centers to rescue discarded objects, wrapping her finds in paper, fabric, wool, and translucent layers of gesso. She then relinquishes control, adding colored pencil and watercolor fineliner to the surface, and finding a way to convert one culture’s trash into another migrant’s treasure.
Since 2025, Jiwon has stretched her practice into the cosmos. Currently, she is involved in a group piece inspired by neutrinos, the subatomic particles that pass elusively through our fingertips without us ever feeling their presence. Through elements of chance, play, ice, and that which lingers, it forms part of an ongoing project to visualize unseen physical realities, lost histories, and marginalized voices. These are the things that cannot be caught in the act by cold, objective instruments. They can only be detected under the microscope of curiosity and compassion, and with skin thick enough to let itself be punctured, only to heal again to the calmer, more considerate beat of a world in transit.
