#134: Christa Joo Hyun D’Angelo

On the occasion of Christa Joo Hyun D’Angelo’s first monograph Fatal Attraction at Mousse Publishing, we are delighted to host the book launch with

a talk at KW Institute for Contemporary Art at 21:00,
on the panel:  Martin Falck (book designer) and Christa Joo Hyun D’Angelo,
moderated by Övül Ö. Durmuşoğlu,

and a film screening as usual at the Babylon film theater at 24:00 | midnight.

The core of Christa Joo Hyun D’Angelo’s work confronts fear, vulnerability, and what is thus invisible through video, neon, installation, and sculpture exploring themes such as racism, domestic violence, HIV, abortion, suicide, and transracial adoption. Drawing on history, personal narratives, and memory, she navigates lewd behaviors and precarious conditions, and attempts to redefine what is normal while embracing difference as a source of inspiration and empowerment in order to discover new means of acceptance and ultimately, healing.

Christa Joo Hyun D’Angelo will show:

Bitches and Witches, 2019, 4:30 min
Bitches and Witches, combines frantic editing amid themes of heartbreak, bad romance, shame, and lust, striving to uncover the invisible ways in which misogyny unveils itself in relationships. Stereotypes of femininity are vividly interwoven between playful soundscapes and fast-paced jump cuts to form a bold investigation on sexual violence.

Cool Girl, 2019,  4:55 min
The video collage, Cool Girl, plays with racialized female characters amid Hollywood cinema, 80s dance pop music, and video game culture. Through fast editing and vivid action scenes from cult classics – Kill Bill, Street Fighter, Waiting to Exhale and What’s Love Got to Do with It? The characters in Cool Girl seek revenge, vengeance, and liberation from their white counterparts and male adversaries, alluding to both the ominous and restrictive ways in which popular culture exoticizes and forms caricatures of women of color. Through humorous visuals and abrupt sound juxtapositions, Cool Girl confronts the audience with absurd and often violent racial depictions that are otherwise left unseen.

Protest and Desire, 2019, 19:55 min
Protest and Desire is a video artwork that challenges popular STD / HIV discourse by focusing on how women of color deal with intimacy, sex, and age that relates to STDs and HIV within the landscape of white Europe. The video concentrates on an endearing 2 year portrait that disentangles notions about how women of color relate to their own sexuality, interracial relationships, ideas of belonging, and their personal complexities with HIV / STDs. The work delicately unveils inherent biases that are bound to women of color and their struggle to attain acceptance both within and outside their own communities. Through dream-like sequences and whimsical imagery, Protest and Desire imagines new ways to define what is normal and propels new meaning on “sickness”, desire, and relationships by confronting the ghosts of the past and the fears that haunt our present realities.

MOTHERNIGHT, 2020,  17:20 min
Told from the memories of 3 female vampires murdered in the past and present, MOTHERNIGHT combines sci-fi horror, folktales, and historical narratives to form a probing investigation on how power and male lineage are inherently linked to the institution of the family. It unveils how colonial legacies and war histories are inherently connected to patriarchal violence and Western domination while pondering new means of kinship beyond racial belonging. 

Born out of myths and folktales that demonized women outcasts, vampires originated from the Russian word “upir” which means “sinner” or a practitioner of witchcraft. In MOTHERNIGHT, the 3 vampires are in search of redemption and salvation as they attempt to resolve their own hidden pasts – murder, domestic violence, suicide, transracial adoption and the shame that haunts them in the afterlife. Based on Japanese nursemaid lullabies, Chinese ghost operas, Korean shaman tales and the South Korean films, The Housemaid & Lady Vengeance, MOTHERNIGHT combines collage storytelling in order to reveal how personal as well as collective histories intersect throughout various cultures and time periods. The video confronts how female isolation and the institution of the family are tethered to power dynamics deeply rooted in colonial traditions and patriarchal violence. The project seeks to adopt empathetic strategies that resist historical oppression & attempts to reconcile the past while posing critical questions on the future of kinship, heteronormativity, and the descent of fear.

A Lover’s Touch, 2022, 24:12 min
In seeking to understand how the racialized female body is both a site of temptation and domination, A Lover’s Touch addresses how classism, shame, and segregation sustain the silent realities of intimate partner violence. The work raises critical questions on how Eurocentric narratives perpetuate dominant ideas of “exoticism”  that lead to women of color’s marginalization and systemic abuse. Told through a simulated psychotherapy session, the work observes how patriarchal masculinity is linked to violence, control, and racial fetishization. 

Christa Joo Hyun D’Angelo was born in Busan, South Korea and raised in NYC. A graduate of The Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow Poland, she is a visiting lecturer in the Media Department at Muthesius University of Fine Arts and Design, Kiel.  Her work has been exhibited at Kunstverein Braunschweig, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art E.V, The Screen City Biennale, and Galeria Studio in Warsaw and is included in The Federal Collection of Contemporary Art Germany. She has designed sets for Fever Ray, King Kong Magazine, and Wang-Ping Hsiang’s play, Ghosts of the Landwehr Canal (2023). Christa Joo Hyun D’Angelo lives and works in Berlin.