Originality & Identity

Mooni Perry’s practice begins with a sustained interest in figures that destabilize binary social orders—so-called “double bind” or “twice-fallen” beings. In her work And They Begged Repeatedly Not to Order Them to Go into the Abyss(2019), she redefines alterity not as “the state of the other” but as “the other already residing within the self,” thereby proposing a sensibility that dismantles separation and hierarchy. In this sense, alterity extends beyond differences between humans to include animals and spirits as part of an ontological category.

This politics of alterity becomes more specific in Binlang Xishi(2021), where it connects to the metaphor of “filth.” The “binlang xishi” featured in the video are women who sell betel nuts—a tropical fruit with stimulant and mildly hallucinogenic properties—primarily to male manual laborers, operating from roadside booths while wearing revealing outfits. After the sale of betel nuts was outlawed in Taiwan in 2002, these women, who had always stood at the margin of sex work, were pushed further out of public visibility.

The artist names these women “stained beings” who have fallen twice—biologically and socioeconomically—and through this, questions the dichotomy between purity and impurity. Her gaze disrupts binary hierarchies not by appealing to redemptive narratives or victimhood, but by reframing “unruliness” as a productive concept that functions within social systems.

The film project ‘Missing: When My Dog Can’t Even Come Back As a Ghost’, developed since 2021, further expands the category of alterity to include marginalized beings involved in the biotechnology of animal cloning—specifically female animals and surrogate female bodies. Perry examines these systems through the emotional and religious frameworks of “love” and “reincarnation,” raising fundamental questions about whether cloning can truly heal loss, or whether it creates new forms of disappearance.

In her recent work EL(2025), presented at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Gwacheon as part of the exhibition 《Young Korean Artist 2025》, Perry’s perspective—initially grounded in the intersection of feminism and veganism—shifts toward historical temporality, memory, and spatiality. This short fiction film, based on research in Manchuria, traces the artist’s ongoing exploration of imperialism, women’s migration, and deterritorialized identities. Here, she evokes “bardo-like” existences that operate within the interstices of memory and loss, displacing fixed narratives of history and identity.

Style & Contents

Mooni Perry’s practice began with single-channel video and performance, and has since evolved into multi-channel installations, performance readings, and archival sculptural formats, reflecting a continued commitment to formal experimentation. In And They Begged Repeatedly Not to Order Them to Go into the Abyss(2019), she deconstructs narrative structures within a single-channel format, visualizing an ontological interpenetration of human-animal relations through layered alterities.

Binlang Xishi(2021) is composed of a three-channel video installation using heterogeneous media—VHS, 8mm, 16mm, and 4K—presenting interwoven narratives set in Taiwan, Korea, and Germany. The work constructs and simultaneously disrupts narrative through strategies of slippage and juxtaposition, with symbolic devices such as “portals” and blue holes visually manifesting perceptual fissures.

The work Missing: When My Dog Can’t Even Come Back As a Ghost(2022), presented at the Kumho Museum of Art in the exhibition 《2022 KUMHO YOUNG ARTIST 2》, utilizes a hybrid format of video, sound performance, archival documents, and installation. The piece merges scientific, mythological, and religious discourses around cloning and reincarnation, evoking the sensorial experiences of mourning and disappearance through script readings and auditory traces. This marks an extension of research-based critical aesthetics into the sensory domain.

EL(2025), while adopting the form of a fictional film, retains Perry’s established aesthetics of boundary-crossing existences and non-linear narratives. Shot at the historically significant Liaoning Hotel in Shenyang, China, the film collapses dream and reality, privileging layers of affect and potentiality over linear storytelling. Painterly framing, looped edits, and subtle sonic dissonances invoke a hybrid aesthetic sensibility.

Topography & Continuity

Mooni Perry has maintained a consistent interest in figures that slip from the binaries defined by social order. Rather than merely representing “unruly beings,” her approach focuses on the cultural and institutional gaps where such existences emerge and operate. In doing so, her practice aligns closely with contemporary discourses in feminism, biopolitics, and posthumanism.

Formally, her work has developed from video-based narrative deconstruction into material explorations of media, juxtapositions of text and image, and the curation of research-based archives. Her videos function not as mere documentation or dramatization, but as composite mechanisms that navigate the boundaries between sensation, memory, and identity. Through sound, performance readings, and poetic language, she constructs a multilayered interpretive field.

Currently, Perry continues to work across Korea, Germany, and Taiwan, exploring contemporary identity, narrative, and power structures. She is gaining international recognition with solo exhibitions such as 《Missings: From Baikal to Heaven Lake, from Manchuria to Kailong Temple》(Westfälischer Kunstverein, 2024–2025).

Her practice weaves together complex discourses of ecology, gender, technology, religion, and history, visualizing hybrid identities, ethical alterity, and biopolitical critique. Through research-driven experimental narratives and poetic imagination, Perry occupies a significant position in contemporary art, where she reconfigures ethics and aesthetics within a global context.