Currently based in New York, Kai Oh (b. 1992) has been consistently experimenting with expanding the boundaries of photography. Her work primarily involves discovering traces of often-overlooked beings that exist beneath the surface of urban spaces. She captures these traces through her camera lens and reconstructs them into imagined scenes through post-production.

Kai Oh’s work begins with capturing ecosystems of non-human life forms that exist beneath the rigid and spectacular surfaces of urban spaces, along with signifiers and symbols whose meanings shift according to their geopolitical context. The subjects of her work are observed and recorded through the lens of her perspective and sensibility as a foreigner who has lived and adapted in various cities, including Seoul, Berlin, Nuremberg, New York, and The Hague.

Oh begins by walking with a camera or iPhone in hand, capturing images that she later transfers to her computer. Using programs such as Photoshop, she edits, distorts, and retouches these photographs. As she layers the edited images and composes them organically, her imagination and subjectivity intervene, giving rise to surreal visual scenes. 

Kai Oh has continued to question whether “a photograph has to end as a single image” and whether “there might be alternative ways for a photograph to be installed.” These inquiries have led her, with each new exhibition, to explore not only image editing but also the physicality of printed, two-dimensional photographic images—transforming and reinterpreting them through various methods.

The ‘Cat Series’ (2021), presented in the two-person exhibition 《Awkward Gaps》 held at Whitenoise in 2021, originates from photographs the artist took of cats she encountered. In this series, Kai Oh actively experimented with the materiality of photographic paper by printing digital images and repeatedly engaging in acts of cutting, weaving, and reassembling them—thus pushing the boundaries of the photographic medium beyond the flat surface.

In her ‘Semi-frame Series’ (2021), presented at the group exhibition 《Super-fine》 held at the Ilmin Museum of Art in 2021, Kai Oh positioned the photographic subjects in a state that was neither fully framed nor entirely partitioned, but rather in a neutral zone. She digitally deconstructed, reconfigured, and rearranged the photographs in Photoshop, then manually cut out the shapes and affixed them to the surface of glass.
 
The transparent quality of the glass creates the illusion that the swirling, protruding images are traversing the exhibition space. Instead of confining the photographic image within a fixed frame, Oh attached images to both the front and back of the glass—or at times only to one side, leaving the reverse side fully exposed—and allowed some elements to extend all the way to the floor. This approach enabled the images to flow freely and intrude into the space, emphasizing their fluid and uncontained presence. 

Furthermore, each of the four glass panels was equipped with hinges suggestive of movement, and wheels that allowed the surfaces themselves to physically shift, thereby giving tangible form to the motion suggested in the images.

Each work is composed of reconstructed images based on the artist’s imagination, sparked by ordinary and everyday moments. For instance, the piece that appears to pierce through the exhibition wall and flow down onto the floor originated from a memory in which the artist, gazing at the wall in front of her house one day, felt as though the wall was dividing space and firmly blocking something. 

In that moment, she imagined a being that could freely escape the wall and disregard its presence altogether. This idea materialized through duplicating the same image twice and attaching it to both the front and back surfaces—creating a form that seems to break through and emerge from the wall itself.

Meanwhile, in the 2022 group exhibition 《Temporary Landing》 held at This is Not a Church, Kai Oh presented five works based on images of the inside of a mouth and the underground. In her pieces, images of mouths and toothbrushes, soil and roots appear in distorted relationships—subtly shifted from their natural interactions—provoking an uncanny sensation. 

For instance, multiple toothbrushes are shown crammed into a single mouth, or the roots exposed from the soil appear to be pulled in opposing directions. At times, the images of the mouth and the earth are intermingled, creating a surreal and disorienting effect.

In this way, Kai Oh disrupts the safe and controlled state of two delicate and highly selective receptors of external matter. The five works, each positioned at a distance from one another in the exhibition space, are connected to fixed supports of varying forms and methods, each expressing a different sense of tension and weight in relation to gravity.

In this way, Kai Oh has continuously experimented not only with diverse material manipulations of photographic images, but also with modes of installation that convey her reimagined, uncanny visuals. In the 2023 group exhibition 《Autohypnosis》 at G Gallery, she presented installation works in which images were printed on fabrics of varying textures, thicknesses, and degrees of transparency—such as velvet, silk, voile, cotton, and mesh—then shaped sculpturally in accordance with each material's physical properties. 

The exhibited fabric installations, Morningside Park Snail (2023), Web (in Pink, Green and 0) (2023), and Snail (Void) (2023), began with photographs the artist captured in the city where she lives as an outsider. These images were printed, cut, and interwoven into fabric layers, stacking spatial strata upon one another across the textile surfaces.

As Kai Oh adapts to the context of each new city she inhabits, she captures with her camera the conflicting internal sensations of estrangement and acceptance, as well as phenomena that recur across different urban environments. The subjects of her work are often neutral elements—those tied to the cycles of nature—that can be observed anywhere. 

The “snail” that frequently appears in her work serves as a metaphor for this process. Like a copied-and-pasted image, the snail repetitively clings to the printed fabric surface, embodying both adaptation and quiet persistence.

In this way, Kai Oh continues to explore the physicality of photography by not only digitally re-editing collected images, but also engaging in manual processes such as cutting, puncturing, weaving, and painting over photographs.
 
In her 2023 solo exhibition 《Half Sticky》, presented after being selected for “IBK & GMoMA YOUNG ARTISTS 2023,” she expanded the material properties of photography by incorporating disparate materials like sponge and structural elements such as temporary partition walls as supports for the work.  

By drawing spatial components like wall structures and surfaces into the work, the artist transforms the installation into a large-scale photographic environment and fluidly extends the materiality of her digital collage images.

In her recent solo exhibition 《Will you Marry Me?》 (Subtitled NYC, 2025), Kai Oh presented a new body of work that, rather than centering on her surrounding environment, focused on collages of her own body. Her latest series, ‘Unpleasant Episodes’ (2025), weaves together humor, defiance, and photographic images of her breasts and nipples. 

For Oh, the body is a site of both intimacy and projection, shaped as much by personal experience as by external scrutiny. Women’s breasts and nipples, in particular, are often subject to double standards: celebrated as symbols of beauty under certain conditions, yet deemed indecent and in need of covering or flattening under others.

Oh confronts these contradictions through the fragmentation and reassembly of these bulbous curves and protrusions, underscoring how they are simultaneously hyper-visible and overlooked. Her primary method is digital collage; by layering and blending, she deconstructs and reconfigures breasts and nipples, exposing how bodies are flattened and codified into objects or symbols. What might appear sensual or maternal in one context instead becomes something altogether different here—a grotesque yet whimsical presence, severed from its usual associations.

Additionally, Kai Oh introduces the disparate materials of silk and soil as an expanded part of the work. The translucency of silk evokes tension between exposure and concealment, metaphorically revealing the gap between how the body is perceived and how it is projected. Meanwhile, the soil, while forming mounds and curves, inherently carries an unstable materiality that resonates with the images within the work. 

The bodies in Oh’s works, which deconstruct the existing context imposed on the female body and emerge in a grotesque and uncanny manner, do not provide any interpretation or resolution. Her bodies are not integrated into a singular whole, refuse to be consumed, and instead confront that very refusal, choosing to become an unpleasant presence.

In this way, Kai Oh explores the ever-changing world paradoxically through the medium of photography, which inherently captures moments and fixes subjects, while expanding photography into a flexible, intermediary existence. In this process, the artist engages in various media experiments, utilizing techniques for selecting, editing, distorting, and post-processing photographic images alongside her own body as a quasi-tool. Oh's work provides a glimpse into the contemporary extension of the photographic medium.

 "I'm interested in flexibility, expandability, and recoverability. I want to explore phenomena that are often overlooked because they are not immediately visible or present on the surface, changing interpretations when the comparison group shifts, and imagined scenes."   (Kai Oh, from the BE(ATTITUDE) interview)

Kai Oh earned her BFA in sculpture at Seoul National University, and the Academy of Fine Arts Nürnberg, and later studied photography at Columbia University Graduate School. Her solo exhibitions include 《Will you Marry Me?》 (Subtitled NYC, New York, 2025), 《Half Sticky》 (IBK Industrial Bank of Korea, Seoul, 2023), 《Softsharp》 (Cylinder, Seoul, 2021), and more.
 
In addition, she has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including 《Autohypnosis》 (G Gallery, Seoul, 2023), 《The Postmodern Child Part 2》 (Busan Museum of Contemporary Art, Busan, 2023), 《Rales, Wheezes and Crackles》 (DOOSAN Gallery, Seoul, 2022), 《Super-fine》 (Ilmin Museum of Art, Seoul, 2021), and 《Foam Talent》 (Foam Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2017). 

Kai Oh is currently an artist-in-residence at the 2025 Light Work Residency in New York and has been selected for several artist support programs, including the IBK & GMoMA YOUNG ARTISTS 2023.

References

• 오가영, Kai Oh (Artist Website)
• 비애티튜드, 예기치 못한, 그래서 더욱 솔직한
• 화이트노이즈, 어색한 사이 (Whitenoise, Awkward Gaps)
• AHL Foundation, 2024 Space Uptown 2024: Fantasy in Abstraction
• 일민미술관, Super-fine: 가벼운 사진술 (Ilmin Museum of Art, Super-fine)
• 일민미술관, Super-fine: 가벼운 사진술 – 아티스트 토크: 김경태, 오가영 (Ilmin Museum of Art, Super-fine – Artist Talk: Kyoungtae Kim, Kai Oh)
• 지갤러리, 오토힙노시스 (G Gallery, Autohypnosis)
• IBK 행복나눔재단, [IBK & GMoma YOUNG ARTISTS 2023] 오가영 개인전: Half Sticky