Hyeree Ro (b.1987) is an artist based in Brooklyn and Seoul, whose practice centers on object-based installations and multilingual, fragmented narrative performances rooted in her experiences of migration. Drawing from her childhood spent moving between different countries, Ro weaves together layered stories through space, the body, language, and objects.

Born to immigrant parents and raised in California, Hyeree Ro returned to Korea during her teenage years and later moved back to the United States as an international student. Her life, marked by constant relocation from an early age, has significantly influenced her artistic practice—shaping her approach to creating works that are adaptable to different places and times, naturally shifting between languages, and crafting long narratives from short fragments.

Her work is built through the interplay of three key elements: objects, movement, and narrative. Among these, objects serve as the starting point of her practice. They are often composed of mundane and readily available, mass-produced materials such as plywood, wooden beams, tubing, and vinyl, as well as discarded items like stones and food scraps.

These objects, in themselves, do not point to or imply any specific meaning. Curator Haeju Kim observed that “objects, which mostly remain in an abstract state, are arranged or layered in space to compose scenes of lines and planes, much like a drawing made with a pen.”

This abstraction carries the potential to be freely linked to multiple forms of narrative when body and language become entangled. If Ro’s objects are positioned within the work as tools for weaving stories, then the body becomes the medium that moves between them, conveying the narrative through its presence and motion.

Her early works often explored bodily movement within restricted conditions. For example, the performance video Meeting the Ceiling (2013) takes place in a narrow space between a bunk bed mattress and the ceiling. In this performance, the artist maintains contact with the ceiling, following the rule that no part of the body may touch the ceiling more than once. The performance continues only for as long as this condition can be sustained.

In this context, the movement of the body is permitted solely within the structural confines of the given objects and space, and the performer is absorbed into the logic of an object. The body, unable to alter its environment by will, moves persistently in an effort to adapt to a fixed framework—but ultimately arrives at a point of limitation.

Starting with the ‘LA-sung’ (2016–2017) series, there was a shift in both the nature of the objects and the artist’s approach to handling and engaging with them. Whereas in earlier performance works the body existed passively, subject to the logic of objects, this series introduces a stage-like setting where the performer becomes an active agent—narrating stories while interacting with objects.

The series revolves around the story of a father who has lived in Los Angeles for twenty years and a daughter who has lived in Seoul for fifteen. In the first piece, LA-sung (2016), the performer lays out wooden boards roughly the size of her body on the floor and fidgets with small objects no larger than her palm, all while recounting personal memories and family history.

In her subsequent works, Ro gradually heightened the connection between objects and the body, developing toward larger-scale movements and more expansive object dimensions. The second piece, Piano (2016), serves as a prequel to LA-sung, weaving together fragmented memories from the artist’s childhood.

In this performance, two performers move around a wooden structure, manipulating various objects made from materials such as plaster, terracotta, pvc hoses, and wire. As they interact with these objects, they deliver a narration that threads together vivid, specific recollections from the artist’s early years.

The third work, Thirty-thousand Dollars (2016), unfolds within the most expansive stage setting to date, presenting an autobiographical narrative through performance. Within this widened space, the performer carefully balances thin wires or twigs atop palm-sized zeolite clay, presses their forehead precariously against the raised end of a wooden plank that rests on a steel support structure, or props hinged wooden boards upright against a wall—each gesture deliberate and laden with tension.

The performer’s struggle to achieve verticality or self-support is met with the inherent instability of the objects’ materiality. This tension is further deepened by the autobiographical narrative surrounding debt—amplified through the escalating figures of three hundred, three thousand, and thirty thousand. As these personal accounts intertwine with the performer’s repeated efforts and inevitable failures, the work invites reflection on the meaning of a life shaped by unrelenting labor, precarity, and the weight of unfulfilled striving.

The fourth work in the series, Romance (2017), explores the formal relationship between stage and narrative, incorporating choreographic elements. A space composed of precariously upright wooden structures and blue hoses is arranged in a line on the floor, forming the stage for the performance.

The performer moves across this stage or boundary, executing a somewhat restrained choreography. While the narrative seems to center on descriptions of scenes from memory, it becomes fragmented at the level of individual words. Within this framework, the performer’s movements are more directly connected to the objects than before—for instance, extending a leg to lower the body and pick up an object from the floor, sitting into the shape of a carved-out wooden space, or lying down on the floor.

The final work in the series, Kidney (2017), unfolds within a stage space that is neither large nor small—roughly similar in scale to the human body—and centers around two kidneys and two knees as focal points. In this piece, the connection between object and body becomes even more intimate, as the objects and the performer’s body rely on one another, creating synchronized movements in response to each other.

Comprising a total of five works, the ‘LA-sung’ series presents a gradual process in which objects, the body, and narrative interlock to gather and piece together the artist’s autobiographical experiences—fragments of memory that are shaped into a structural framework.

Hyeree Ro, who has long woven narratives through the interaction between the human body and objects, expanded her exploration in her 2022 solo exhibition 《Jinhee》 at Project Space Sarubia. In this project, she unfolded a narrative mediated through the body of animal and objects, as well as those of a fictional character—Jinhee—who does not physically exist.

The ‘Jinhee’ project was conceived as the artist began living with an abandoned dog named Jinny. It explores the similarities and differences in how objects are sensed through the body of an animal versus that of a human. Observing her surroundings from Jinny’s perspective, Ro contemplated how the confined animal perceives and senses the boundary between inside and outside—a distinction shaped by physical and psychological barriers.

Based on this line of thought, the works produced for the exhibition function as devices that remind us how all relationships in the world are divided—either visibly or invisibly—by veils. These works range from structures that allow bodily contact and passage to large barriers where the boundary between inside and outside becomes ambiguous. As viewers move through the structures within the exhibition space, they shift between various modes of perception: third-person observer, first-person observer, and first-person protagonist.

The objects scattered across the floor resemble things like teeth, desks, belly buttons, and umbilical cords, yet their forms defy easy identification. The exhibition space, filled with these indefinable objects and ambiguous relationships, places the viewer at a threshold where the perspectives of Jinhee (the fictional human) and Jinny (the animal) intersect.

In the work Falls (2022), exhibited at the Leeum Museum of Art as part of 《ARTSPECTRUM 2022》, Ro explores the entanglement of contemporary history and personal narrative through objects. The piece traces points of intersection between three major historical events—the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, and the election of Donald Trump as U.S. President in 2017—and the lives of individuals from diverse backgrounds.

The various structures that make up the work evoke real-world imagery, such as cascading waterfalls or airport security checkpoints, while simultaneously referencing abstract systems like plummeting stock market graphs or directional lines in airport terminals.

Some of these structures serve as stages for performance, where the artist’s movements respond to the objects, activating them in a way that gives form to her personal experiences of immigration and displacement.

In her current solo exhibition 《August is the cruelest》 at DOOSAN Gallery, Hyeree Ro unfolds memories of summer, movement, journeys, partings, and loss through objects. Whereas her previous works often took on abstract forms that didn’t suggest specific subjects, in this exhibition, her sculptures have shifted into more concrete and recognizable shapes. 

The sculptures resemble objects associated with travel and mobility—cars, tents, kayaks—but they appear twisted, turned inside out, or otherwise distorted, stripped of their original functions. A car that can’t drive, a tent that can’t be slept in, and a kayak that can’t sail all carry the intertwined narratives of the artist and her father.

Niro(2024) is a sculpture modeled after the Kia Niro that the artist’s father drove in the United States. In this work, the car represents more than just a means of transportation—it evokes the life of labor and survival tied to their experience of living in America. Sitting in the back seat of the sculpted car, viewers listen to a sound piece that weaves stories of people departing and the many journeys of movement, prompting them to imagine an “unknown destination” that some may never reach.

In this way, Hyeree Ro's practice has consistently explored narratives—both personal and of our time—through objects and the body, experimenting with new forms of communication through sensory experience. Her objects no longer serve their original purpose or hold fixed meanings, but instead become collaborators in storytelling, intertwined with the human body and language.

Woven through the triad of object–body–narration, her works address the intersections of the historical and the personal, the macro and micro, the inside and outside in individual lives. They offer a sensuous reflection on the layered experiences and emotions of contemporary life.

”Not this or that, but the possibility of bodies and places being this and that at once.”(Hyeree Ro, Artist’s Note)

Hyeree Ro received her BFA in Fine Art from the Korea National University of Arts and her MFA in Sculpture from Yale School of Art. Her solo exhibitions include 《August is the cruelest》 (DOOSAN Gallery, Seoul, 2025), 《Niro》 (Canal Projects, New York, 2024), 《Jinhee》 (Project Space Sarubia, Seoul, 2022), and 《LA-sung》 (Yangju 777 Gallery, Yangju, 2017).

Ro has also participated in numerous group exhibitions both in Korea and internationally, including at Surim Cube (Seoul, 2024), Billytown (The Hague, Netherlands, 2024), AHL Foundation Gallery (New York, 2024), Leeum Museum of Art (Seoul, 2022), Ilmin Museum of Art (Seoul, 2019), HITE Collection (Seoul, 2017), Akiyoshidai International Art Village (Mine, Japan, 2017), and DOOSAN Gallery (Seoul, 2017).

She has been awarded and selected for several prestigious grants and residency programs, including the SeMA Nanji Residency (Seoul, 2025), the Jenni Crain Foundation Grant (New York, 2024), the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant (New York, 2023), Field Projects Ceramics Residency (Brooklyn, 2023), and the Nars Foundation International Residency (Brooklyn, 2022), among others.

References

• 노혜리, Hyeree Ro (Artist Website)
• 김해주, 시간을 채우는 것: 사물, 몸, 말 
• 우아름, 난투에서 연극으로
• 양주시립미술창작스튜디오 777레지던스, LA-sung (Yangju 777 Art Studio, LA-sung)
• 퍼폼, 키드니 (PERFORM, Kidney) 
• 프로젝트 스페이스 사루비아, 진희 (Project Space Sarubia, Jinhee)
• 리움미술관, 노혜리, “폴즈”, 아트스펙트럼 2022 참여작가 인터뷰 
• 월간미술, 아트스펙트럼 2022
• 두산갤러리, August is the cruelest (DOOSAN Gallery, August is the cruelest)