For the “Junge Akademie” program of the Academy of the Arts Berlin:
“It’s More Painful to Live Stretched Time Than Broken Space”: Hana Yoo’s Critical Anthropomorphism
This essay is a reading of Hana Yoo’s artistic practice through the tensions of anthropomorphism. Using short interpretations, it discusses several of her works while interlacing them with the distinction – as stressed by Hana Yoo – between anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism. The text describes the artworks as experiments with the human perspective onto non-human modes of being in the mode of a critical anthropomorphism: by perceiving non-humans through qualities that have previously only been attributed to humans (e.g., emotional, compassionate, empathetic), one may deconstruct the objectification of those beings (all too often practised in capitalist extractivism) while acknowledging the similarities between humans and the many lifeforms sharing this planet.
Read the full essay (and discover some of Hana’s imageneries) here.
