Boma Pak (b. 1988) creates space for ephemeral substances—like light and air—and for beings considered “feminine” or peripheral, by working through a variety of media including drawing, objects, spontaneous actions, and scent, as well as multiple layers of identity.
 
Through her practice, Pak explores the emotions and happenings that emerge when exceptional sensibilities are inserted into the rigid structures of society. She seeks ways for marginalized entities—those pushed to the periphery by social norms—to exist and be acknowledged.

Boma Pak’s work begins by drawing parallels between fleeting sensations—like a sudden glimmer of light or a transient moment—and beings that are often dismissed as fake, easily discarded, or endlessly replaced. These ephemeral or marginal entities are frequently devalued within systems such as capitalism or broader social structures. Pak investigates their materiality, latent power, and repetition (or replication) through various methods of reflection and inquiry.
 
Since 2013, the artist has experimented with ways of enacting and articulating these inquiries by establishing fictional companies or assigning herself shifting identities, each with different roles and purposes, to reenact and vocalize them as externalized events.

For instance, Pak has developed and enacted multiple identities to explore and reflect upon different layers of meaning. These include the partially virtual studio fldjf studio, which embodies the concept of a “reflector”; WTM decoration & boma, which emphasizes the tactile engagement with material through handcrafted processes; as well as personas such as the dancer qhak, Mijeong-i, and the receptionist R.
 
Through these personas, she alludes to fictional or hidden companies and has temporarily occupied high-rise buildings—symbols of concentrated capital power—while producing sculptures, objects, scents, sounds, and decorative elements.

Since 2014, fldjf studio has produced approximately 10,000 flat digital objects—referred to as “light-covers”—made of walls, frames, and ribbons. These works attempt to capture the light reflected off materials such as glass windows of high-rise buildings, relying on the reflective surfaces themselves to do so, then repeatedly covering them again in layered processes.
 
Meanwhile, WTM decoration & boma (active since 2018) emerged as a tactile extension of the sensations explored in fldjf studio, creating and selling accessories and decorative objects made of air-dry clay and plaster clay.

Boma Pak reveals the digital images, prints, melodies, and objects generated throughout these projects through services, advertisements, performances, events, and social media. She presents them as installations enriched with decorative and interior elements. This approach can be seen as an experiment in materializing the form of art through simulations that lack physical substance.

In her 2019 solo exhibition 《Rebercca လက် and The Cost》 at Gallery SP, Boma Pak presented the show in the form of a "pop-up store" selling perfumes created by a fictional character she had constructed, Rebercca လက်. The exhibition space was built around the narrative of Rebercca လက်, a Russian man who, despite having lost both arms in an accident, continues to make perfume.

The scent that filled the space revealed its presence through the fictional narrative, while simultaneously taking on a fictional nature itself. The accompanying objects installed for the scent served to support its existence, prompting a re-perception of the white cube gallery space in a new and alternative way.

In 2021, Boma Pak consolidated the multiple identities she had explored since 2013 under the fictional company “Sophie Etulips Xylang Co.,” granting the various “fakes” she had experimented with a coherent worldview and narrative. This fictional company was conceived to reproduce the very systems that categorize the real and the fake, the sublime and the trivial, the valuable and the marginal.
 
Her solo exhibition 《Sophie Etulips Xylang Co.,》 (2021–2022), presented online, adopted the format of an official corporate website, mirroring the aesthetics of real-world companies. However, by deliberately omitting the expected content typically found on such sites, the work refused to be defined by capitalist or patriarchal language and frameworks.

The web-based presentation introduces the company in a sequential, progressive manner, unfolding across eleven sections that include its ironic founding myth and history, light-handling technologies, and fragmented bodies and shadows representing the company’s owner and executives. Utilizing photography, digital imagery, sound, and other diverse media, the presentation constructs a reversed logic of the world.
 
Rather than ruling over or controlling solid matter, the company learns from its flows. In this reimagined hierarchy, it is the hands-on, lower-level staff—those who physically touch and interact with the building—who rise to become the true owners of the company. The executives, in turn, are not fixed figures but assemblages of scattered material fragments.

Unlike companies built on solid concrete floors and pillars, this imagined corporation is constructed from fragmented, transparent images—lacking both a profit structure and a physical building. In its absence, it asserts its presence through an excess of sensation, proving that it exists in the form of heightened sensorial experience.
 
In doing so, it destabilizes the hierarchies imposed by rationalist worldviews that distrust the senses—between what is deemed “real” and what is dismissed as “fake,” between what is granted exchange value in the market and what is not. Through this rupture, the viewer is prompted to encounter the very materials that have been excluded by dominant systems of value.

In the 2023 solo exhibition 《Ritual of Matter》, the fictional company Sophie Etulips Xylang Co. temporarily occupied the lobby ROOM— a lounge space at the Leeum Museum of Art—transforming it into the company’s reception area. The grand materials typically seen in skyscraper lobbies, such as large glass façades and majestic marble, were replaced here with lighter, more trivial substances.
 
The artist created oil paintings of marble textures and produced them as vinyl wraps, which were applied to cover the surfaces of furniture and fixtures throughout the space.

The portraits of the company’s executives displayed in the space appeared as silhouettes with neither faces nor names visible. Lighting installed around the portraits created an illusion, as if someone were actually present behind them.
 
The area surrounding the portraits was arranged like an altar, and scattered around it were various objects—artificial flowers, counterfeit company currency, plastic pieces resembling cheap jewelry, plaster cigarette butts, and more—that mourned those beings relegated to the realm of oblivion

The subtle vibrations of the trembling walls, the faintly lingering scents, and the ambiguous sounds drifting through the air all cast these voiceless, ever-changing materials as the main protagonists. In this way, the ritual of matter performed within this subverted company elevates materials deemed worthless by the market system, allowing them to reveal a rich and abundant presence.

Additionally, the performance Opera: Sky Blue Canon Infinitus, held alongside the exhibition, extended the ritual of matter into the museum’s lobby space. Through the passion conveyed by the performer, sounds mourning forgotten materials, and the attentive actions of staff both inside and outside the museum, the lobby was reconfigured to create a state where the solid and the flowing resonate indistinguishably with one another.

In this way, Boma Pak employs a variety of media to bring into her work things that are often dismissed as insignificant, quickly consumed, or fleeting—like light, which is vividly sensed yet intangible. Through the use of personas, she gives fictional bodies a presence, and by creating virtual spaces such as websites, she unfolds narratives that lack a tangible form.
 
Her practice grants sensory presence to marginalized and disappearing entities, illuminating and comforting them by disrupting and overturning the value systems imposed by capital and society.

 "I hope that through me as a medium, the authority of things commonly called ‘fake’ can be elevated."   (Boma Pak, in an interview with art critic Hyosil Yang) 

Boma Pak graduated from the Department of Fine Arts, School of Visual Arts, Korea National University of Arts. Her major solo exhibitions include 《Ritual of Matter》 (Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul, 2023), 《Baby》 (Project Space Sarubia, Seoul, 2023), 《Mercy : Paintings and Matters 19xx-2022》 (YPC SPACE, Seoul, 2022), 《Sophie Etulips Xylang Co.,》 (Online, 2021), and 《Pre-Open Emerald Glass, The False Sacrifice of White》 (Archive Bomm, Seoul, 2017).
 
She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions such as 《The Edge of Belongings》 (Hessel Museum, New York, 2025), 《MMCA Performing Arts 2025: Showcase - Gathering》 (MMCA / Art Hub Copenhagen, 2024/2025), 《Living in Joy》 (Art Sonje Center, Seoul, 2023), 《Defense: …》 (d/p, Seoul, 2020), 《Shame on You》 (DOOSAN Gallery New York, New York, 2017), and 《Silky Navy Skin》 (Insa Art Space, Seoul, 2016).

References

• 박보마, Boma Pak (Artist Website)
• SEMINAR, 박보마 - 추상 인정 물질 볼륨 기분 필터 환원
• 아트바바, [서문] s-e-x-co.com – Sohpie Etulips Xylang Co., (Artbava, [Preface] s-e-x-co.com – Sohpie Etulips Xylang Co.,
• 갤러리SP, [전시 개요] Rebercca လက် and The Cost (Gallery SP, [Exhibition Overview] Rebercca လက် and The Cost)
• 이연숙(리타), 검은 거울: 박보마의 ‘분위기’에 대한 예비적 연구
• 리움미술관, [서문] 물질의 의식 (Leeum Museum of Art, [Preface] Ritual of Matter)
• 프로젝트 스페이스 사루비아, [서문] Baby (Project Space Sarubia, [Preface] Baby)
• 양효실, 박보마 인터뷰 (Interview by Hyosil Yang)