Siren Eun Young Jung
Siren Eun Young Jung (b. 1974) is a Seoul-based artist whose multidisciplinary practice encompasses visual art, film, and performance. Her work explores how individual desires can be transformed into acts of resistance, historical discourse, and political expression.
Her representative projects include the Dongducheon Project, Gyeonggi-do (2007–2009), and ongoing Yeoseong Gukgeuk (Korean classical opera of women) Project (2008–present). She is the recipient of the 2013 Hermes Foundation Art Award, the 2015 Sindoh Art Prize, and the 2018 Korea Artist Prize. Major solo exhibitions include Deferral Theatre (Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf, 2020) and Hijeck the Gender! (Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Montrea, 2023l). In 2019, she participated in the Korean Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale.
Deferral Theatre
single-channel video, FullHD, color, stereo sound, 35min 05sec, 2018
Deferral Theatre continues Jung’s critical reading of yeoseong gukgeuk’s history by bringing together three performers from different genres: Nam Eun-jin, the genre’s last remaining male-role actresses; Park Min-hee, a gagok (Korean classical song) vocalist; and Azangman, a drag king performer. Through a series of intersecting conversations, the artist asks each of them to reflect on the genres to which they belong. By interweaving their divergent responses, Jung reveals the complex points of intersection between tradition and modernity, gender and identity. Sometimes intervening in their practices and at other times keeping a distance, Jung subtly fractures the seemingly solid constructs of 'tradition' and 'gender'.
The Wedding
pigment print, 42x59cm, 2011
The Wedding appears at first glance to be a conventional wedding photo. In fact, it is a staged image of Jo Geum-aeng, a celebrated male-role actress of the 1950s, posing as a groom next to a female fan. Although Jo was married three times and had three children, this fictional wedding scene—privately kept in her personal archive—was the only "wedding portrait" she chose to preserve. By emphasizing its staged and imaginary nature, Jung invites us to reconsider the tendency to treat “preserved images” as factual historical evidence.
