Point Nemo (2024)
Bespolezno (Pointless)
2024
oil on wood, stainless steal and glass tear
99.9x130cm
A Nameless Memory
2024
photography, glitter, and resin on seashell
Souls Wishing Not to Be Dead
2024
led light bulb, electric wire, wood box, Arduino, and printed photography on seashell
flexible installation size
Point Nemo
2024
13min 5sec, single channel video
Point Nemo is a particular place designated by calculating the most vast point from all land on the Pacific Ocean. Meaning "no one" in Latin, it was once a distant place of death that could never be returned, and it became the loneliest place where humans could be isolated. Although the place can now be searched everywhere due to the development of the Internet and communication, not many people still visit.
Video work Point Nemo (2024) is based on artist’s experience of an online conversation with a man who had fled away from Russia-Ukraine War to Korea. ‘I’, the man’s nickname, and I shared conversations that began with a sense of loss for place to belong, expanded into reflections on the past, on life, and on the future.
For those who are mentally isolated have no one to confide in about an unpredictable future, such connections—however suspicious or fleeting, like spam messages—can become an unexpectedly powerful form of consolation. This is a 21st-century digital diasporan story of those who, unable to belong to their home, being pushed out to the point of Nemo beyond the land, attempting to connect with the world online.
The narration, spoken by the artist, carries the grief that emerges from a state of placelessness. Meanwhile, the sequence of images reveals the irony that the very technologies enabling our connection—air travel and the internet—developed alongside histories of war and destruction. Between the Korean narration and English subtitle, the distinction between I and me collapses, addressing the cognitive dissonance and sympathy that arise from incomplete, unstable forms of connection.
The question artist asks—“Can a bird that lost its home still fly?” functions as the guiding question of the work. Yet a bird is, after all, capable of flight, and leaving land in search of freedom has long been one of humanity’s deepest desires.