Mikyung Oh's Mimicry

Mimicry in Sexuality, Home, and Self

Sanghee Jung (Art Critic)

Mikyung Oh’s works of art eclectically express “Sexuality and Home” and “Self.” Storytellers in the works make a voyage for long play of mimicry, while connoting contradicted associable images in one stage and concealing their own realities.

Eclecticism is given concrete expression with ‘the Existence of Self’ and ‘Home.’ The works are under the Cartesian ideas on which ‘I’ can be considered to be the subject for recognition, while they also simultaneously have a very solid implication about Kantian ones that the existence of ‘I’ can hardly be proved by ‘Self’ easily. According to the situation, Oh sometimes entirely denies ‘Self’ defining the existence of ‘I’. It is a look of incessant slide based on appearance of life controlled by environments without reference to self and total difference between self-existence of ‘to live’ and ‘to be lived’. Trying to catch two kinds of ‘Self’, Oh considers and explores the point in which different selves can be approved as realizations.       

According to Oh, ‘Home’ is complex spaces for ‘Living,’ ‘Staying,’ and ‘Expiring’ of life and, what is more, the tool qualifying ‘Sexuality of self.’ Therefore, ‘Sexuality,’ ‘Home.’ and ‘Self’ are the main subjects creating complex relations which various circumstances are involved for whole life. Home plays a role of eclectic spaces of ‘consciousness and self-consciousness’ helping for understanding own sexuality by myself and ‘unconsciousness’ and ‘other-consciousness’ causing self to be understood by other factors at the same time.

In addition, Oh manages methods of mimicry for the eclectic interpretation of ‘Sexuality,’ ‘Home,’ and ‘Self.’ Mimicry is expressed with ‘Mask’ and ‘Red Shoes’ as means. In her works, real self hides under the masks like snails, flowers, and smoke. Showing fake appearances not real ones, she obstructs the possibility that self would be considered and formed with others’ gaze. The mask is, however, to hide self, but simultaneously to define self-existence. Then, the mask and the home are under the similar situation to qualify and repress, but protect self to be the eclectic means.

There is another eclectic means like the mask. That is the very red shoes, neither black nor white one. Like one of Surrealists’ fetishes, the red shoes have been continuously used Oh’s works in the various forms. The shoes, a utopia for a young girl who has intense aspirations to be a woman, play another means for the mimicry to hide realities. Sexuality, a symbolization of red shoes, means human beings’ identity created as the qualified environments. To be confined in the home, playing to be the mask, wearing red shoes which usually take off in the home, would be considered to be a struggling expression to realize the self ‘to live’ getting out of ‘to be lived.’                            

Meanwhile, as for ‘Raised Trees by Me’ and ‘Raised Fishes by Me,’ Oh believes that these are brought up by her own intension. It means that as the trees and fishes are being her possession regardless of their design, Oh already expectedly recognizes her own existence to be lived by the very ‘Home.’ She faces up to the difficulty: sexuality of self, another name of the identity, can be defined within home, even though the home is nothing but the mask qualifying self, then the self would be merely revealed regardless of the home. As parts of the endeavor to overcome the difficult limitation, she is starting on a long journey of mimicry with hope to be able to fine the real sexuality someday. ■