Standing StillSep 2024 - Feb 2026
Single-channel video installation.
Materials: Mild steel with heat patina, cherry wood, digital display
Dimensions (L x W x H): 27 x 9 x 0.6 in
Duration: 1 minute 35 seconds
Standing Still is a single-channel video installation composed of 228 photographs documenting my legs over time. The images were taken nearly daily between September 2024 and May 2025, during my training in an MMA gym.
Displayed chronologically from a fixed perspective, the images form a stop-motion video that traces a quiet, repetitive cycle of bruising, fading, and recovery. Moments of sparring and impact are deliberately omitted. With no direct depiction of violence, the narration is left ambiguous.
Told through skin, Standing Still presents a morally grey story in which the body repeatedly reaches toward the idea of power - through forceful clashes, often regretful injuries, and slow healing processes. On one hand, the work is a statement of being alive and making an effort to continue living. Meanwhile, it also touches a more dangerous realm of self-torture, insecurity, and the possibility of seeking affirmation through harm. Rather than offering a clear-cut judgment, the project intends to linger in an unresolved space, where awe and discomfort coexist, and where neither autonomy nor compulsivity fully dominates.
The physical installation is composed of a folded thin mild steel sheet treated with heat patina, accompanied by subtly visible cherry wood strips, echoing the chromatic shifts of bruising and the tones of East Asian skin.
The legs are intentionally scaled down to doll-size and isolated from the rest of the body, transformed into an intimate object and a site of eerie spectacle.