Youngsook Choi

Mythology of Night Cleaner
19 October - 19 November

Youngsook is a multi-disciplinary artist of Korean heritage, and also works as a public arts practitioner and researcher with a PhD in human geography. With a particular interest in the brutal hierarchy of neo-liberal system and its institutionalised abuse of human labour and nature, Youngsook often adopts the lived experiences of working-class migrant women as a focal subject. Youngsook worked with various institutions and communities such as Barbican Centre, Milton Keynes Arts Centre, MK Islamic Arts Heritage and Culture in the UK, and Sexuality Museum for Young People, Women and Space Festival in Korea. Youngsook currently lives in East London and is a member of a creative collective RARA.

Youngsook Choi’s solo show ‘Mythology of Night Cleaner’ intersects between the contemporary value system of human labour, global economic operation and post-coloniality. It premieres the full version of her performative piece ‘I met a sleep dealer and became immortal’ which intricates John Burger’s text from his book about migrant workers in 1970s ‘A Seventh Men’ with women migrant cleaners’ recounts of their work experiences and the superstitions around a broom and sweeping. Accompanying this, the installation ‘Infinite Supply’, a Victorian dress made of mop heads, manifests continuing colonial legacy signified by migrants as a low-paid precarious workforce. This exhibition also includes her body of works ‘dis-camouflage’, a deconstruction of camouflage patterns as a visual gesture of subverting neo-liberal militancy in economic politics.