Lim Jeong Soo has developed a practice centered on sculpture and related performance, with a particular interest in the byproducts generated by social conventions that persist from the past into the present. Asking, “Why do we regard certain actions as right and others as not?”, the artist investigates what factors influence such determinations and how the subject of the “I” that perceives them is defined.
Taking such questions as a point of departure, Lim has created sculptures using materials readily found in everyday surroundings, such as decorative fabrics that mimic the forms of animals and plants, as well as elements drawn directly from nature. Her sculptures place the material qualities of animals, plants, and objects on an equal footing, reconfiguring them into a third kind of entity that moves beyond fixed notions of subjecthood and perspective.
Lim approaches herself not as an independent and immutable creation, but as a being composed of energy, and from this perspective pursues subjects that exist outside established categories or along their boundaries. According to her, such subjects include sentences without a subject, the self as an all-encompassing background, individuals who do not belong to a community, superstitions remembered by the body, the mind as an atom, the non-human, and the language of objects.
She rearranges into a single scene objects that mimic nature—such as artificial flowers, mythical animal figures, and items patterned with animal skins—along with phrases carrying multiple meanings and kitsch images in which human desires are condensed, unfolding contemporary landscapes through sculpture, performance, and video. In doing so, she relates to objects not through their conventional functions but through their surfaces—color, texture, form, and scale. She also regards the human body as one object among others, and through performance engages moments and spaces in which human and nonhuman bodies overlap.
Grounded in the perspective that subjects are fluidly constituted in fleeting moments—like surfaces or fragments—she constructs narratives that cut across objects, animals, and plants. Within these, the human body is objectified, allowing it to move beyond hierarchies between subject and object and instead circulate among them, ultimately subverting an anthropocentric worldview.
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