Installation view of 《4 and one-half, knuckle》 © Daewon Yun

Street Woman Fighter and Daewon Yun

One of the reasons Street Woman Fighter (hereafter SWF) attracted such extraordinary attention may be that its protagonists were doubly othered figures. They were not institutional dancers, but street dancers—and at the same time, women. In the way they spoke, dressed, and danced, a distinctly non-institutional resistance remained intact, something rarely seen in conventional competition programs.

By contrast, Korean ink painting (hangukhwa), rooted in China and constrained by tradition, has long struggled to encounter contemporaneity, which demands a rejection of the present while oscillating between the “already” and the “not yet.” In this sense—particularly within university education—hangukhwa can be said to be doubly othered: both from its own past and from contemporary art.

Daewon Yun is a former street dancer who also majored in Korean painting. For him, street dance may have represented a “young body” that one is almost inevitably forced to abandon with age. Meanwhile, in the digital moment of 2021—when the Seoul Metropolitan Government declared itself a “metaverse city”—Korean painting could likewise appear as an anachronistic medium or aesthetic that one might naturally fold away.

At his solo exhibition at Hanchigak, digital graphic videos and NFT works are presented—befitting a young artist in his twenties. The ‘Virtual Body Lab’ video series includes Yun’s own body and movements, yet the body of the street dancer is erased, replaced by a body that conforms to digital signs. This develops into graphic videos reminiscent of a kaleidoscope. A “body that conforms to digital signs” suggests a fragmented and distorted body that fits seamlessly into the digital or virtual world.

If the aesthetics of contemporary art favor dissonance over harmony, instability over stability, shock or discomfort over visual pleasure, unease over comfort, and negativity rather than positivity, this cannot simply be praised. Yun’s strategy—his idea—of “repetition” has been familiar since Andy Warhol, and “distortion or transformation” has long ceased to feel unfamiliar or novel since the Surrealists.

Of course, repetition, distortion, and transformation remain strategies frequently employed by contemporary artists. The question, then, is at what point these strategies become justified for some artists, yet have their legitimacy questioned in Yun’s case. Earlier, Yun’s strategy was referred to as an “idea.” If we insist on distinguishing idea from concept, then an idea is what carries a concept forward.

First, we must ask: for what kind of concept was this idea adopted? Second, how do these ideas connect to the contemporaneity we inhabit—no longer the era of Warhol or Surrealism? These may be harsh questions for a young artist just debuting, but if we agree that irreducibility to anyone else is the highest virtue of an artist, then these are questions Yun must prepare to answer.

Yun states that although the NFT video was sold, he does not know exactly who the buyer is. Paradoxically, the most interesting work may be NFT-BODY COIN, the only work in the exhibition that was financially compensated. This piece does not deny that it itself is a form of virtual currency.


1. The artist does not know who the buyer is.
2. The image of a cryptocurrency was sold and paid for with cryptocurrency.
3. The work was sold, yet remains exhibitable.


Although it is the most commercial work, this sequence is paradoxically new and ironic. For some, this situation may appear “uncomfortable,” “unstable,” or even “abnormal.” For a young artist in his twenties debuting in the art world, it is natural that video, digital media, virtual space, and NFTs—already common media—are recognized as appropriate means of approaching contemporary art. The issue is precisely that these media are already normalized in contemporary art.

Amid countless artists using the same media, and within kaleidoscopic and mandala-like imagery already extensively explored, how can Yun’s work avoid dissolving into one among innumerable anonymous forms within the mandala? Perhaps Hanchigak, located in a market alley in Pyeongtaek—a peripheral counterpart to Yun’s Itaewon—poses this very question to the artist by boldly selecting a young artist through its open call.

The market alley in front of the U.S. Air Force base in Pyeongtaek, where Hanchigak is located, may be one of the places most distant from contemporary art in the Seoul–Gyeonggi region. In a neighborhood largely populated by soldiers or those connected to military-related industries, it is rare for passersby to casually visit and engage with the gallery’s curation.

By contrast, Yun’s Itaewon—sharing a similar historical origin as an entertainment district near a U.S. military base—has developed a markedly higher level of cultural and artistic sensitivity, arguably among the highest in South Korea, from the Leeum Museum to Space and Hyundai Card Concert Hall.

Encountering Yun’s work in a remote corner of a Pyeongtaek market alley, far from Itaewon, seems to demand from us a degree of “distancing” equivalent to that between Itaewon and Pyeongtaek.

Giorgio Agamben, who defined contemporaneity as existing between the “already” and the “not yet,” further explains that a contemporary person is one who “adheres to the present while simultaneously rejecting it.” Itaewon acquired its resistance through othering, much like SWF. This would not have been possible without the distant presence of U.S. military culture. SWF’s aesthetics were possible precisely because they stood far from the polished idol aesthetics of mainstream broadcast television.

Might it be possible, then, for Yun to forge a connection—from what has seemed most distant to him, such as the street body (street dance) or traditional painting—to video, digital media, virtual space, and NFTs? Just as taking distance allows one to clearly grasp the terrain and position of one’s home when viewed from Namsan, perhaps this distance is what Yun’s work now requires.

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