Originality & Identity

Chanmin Jeong’s artistic practice centers on invisible actions and bodily movements embedded in everyday life. She continually questions the value of such gestures, which are increasingly marginalized in a capitalist society driven by efficiency and productivity. Her early works focus on the physical gestures involved in using digital devices and the tactile sensations experienced by the photographer during image-making. Works such as Reflected Space (2016) trace the analog sensory residues excluded from digital systems, seeking to recover a mode of existence grounded in the human body.

Since 2021, Jeong has responded to the expanding digital landscape and the accelerating contactless society by turning her attention to the remaining physical traces of the human body. In The Story That We Are Becoming Alike (2021), she tracked everyday gestures associated with smartphone use and courier labor, rendering these movements visible through drawing, 3D printing, and kinetic installation. In doing so, she reclaims bodily traces that have been dismissed in a technology-centric world and reveals the social context they embody.

In the 2022 exhibition 《Autopoiesistic Life》 at the Seoul Artists’ Platform, Jeong collaborated with another artist to explore an alternative mode of existence outside the dominant narrative of quantitative growth. Through the fictional organism “D-Tardigrade,” Jeong imagines a survival model rooted in inefficiency and cyclical time, emphasizing coexistence and care over competition. This expansion beyond documenting physical actions reflects her broader engagement with the structural conditions of life.

This critical inquiry continues in her recent works, including Mass Action (2023), Movement Mass (2024), and Developed Movement 2024 ver. (2024), where increasingly mundane, minor gestures—such as walking, journaling, or commuting—become central motifs. These works go beyond mere documentation or representation, inviting the viewer to imagine personal rhythms that deviate from society’s prescribed speed and direction.

Style & Contents

Although Jeong began her career in photography, she has critically examined the physical aspects of image-making from the outset. Developed Movement (2021) materialized accelerometer data collected during film development into generative drawings and 3D prints, underscoring the idea that image-making is not solely a visual result, but also a bodily experience. Her methodology breaks down the invisibility of digital processes, aiming to restore the materiality of sensation, time, and movement.

In her solo exhibition 《You and I Look Alike》 (KT&G Sangsangmadang Chuncheon Art Gallery, 2021), Jeong visualized hand gestures used while operating a smartphone and implemented Arduino and sensor-based systems to reproduce repetitive movements from courier labor. Within the framework of a contactless society—one that paradoxically demands physical endurance—Jeong emphasizes the body’s presence. Her installations prompt the viewer to reconsider the physical dimension of their own existence in the here and now.

In her solo exhibition at Alternative Space LOOP in 2023, the large-scale sculptural installation Mass Action converted daily routines of 64 individuals into inflated balloon forms, translating immaterial time into measurable volume. In the same exhibition, Shape of Heard (2023) transformed collected footstep sounds into 3D-printed objects, crossing boundaries between auditory, visual, and tactile perception. These works demonstrate Jeong’s commitment to visualizing invisible routines by expanding sensory experience.

This trajectory became more refined in 2024. In the exhibition 《Skin, the Deepest Part》 (Sehwa Museum of Art, 2024), Movement Mass visualized GPS data, average speed, and time spent in transit as air-filled sculptures. Developed Movement 2024 ver. captured physical movements recorded during intercity bus rides, transforming tilt data of the artist’s soles and head into both sculpture and video. Notably, the video component was produced using AI—specifically ChatGPT—marking a more complex exploration of the relationship between human and machine.

Topography & Continuity

Chanmin Jeong has consistently engaged in the practice of “re-sensitization,” not by focusing on technology itself, but by imbuing overlooked bodily movements and everyday routines—those made invisible by technology—with artistic sensibility. Her work poses sharp questions about the politics of perception in the data-driven era, positioning her at the boundary between technological art and body-based performance.

While her earlier practice was rooted in sensory-centered inquiry, it has gradually expanded toward a critical examination of the relationships between social structures, perception, time, and labor. In projects such as Autopoiesistic Life (2022), which involved collaboration and a fictional life form, she critiques the very structure of survival itself, moving beyond visual transformation to address the complex entanglement of body, time, and technology. This shift further structures her ongoing interests in bodily alienation and the recovery of everyday life.

In recent years, Jeong has increasingly focused on the quantification and visualization of movement, converting imperceptible bodily data into air sculptures, 3D objects, and AI-generated videos. These strategies are not merely formal experiments; they function as speculative gestures that propose new social imaginaries around “slow movement” and “inefficiency.” Through such modes of practice, Jeong continually questions the speed and trajectory of contemporary society, and persistently seeks alternative ways of being within—and outside of—it.

Looking ahead, Jeong is expected to continue her explorations using various data-driven technologies, including AI, sensors, and generative systems. Her work will likely evolve into further experiments that seize disappearing sensations and gestures, visualizing and restructuring the unconscious repetitions and invisible motions of everyday life in a rapidly shifting world.