Sungsil Ryu (b. 1993) employs black comedy to incisively examine capitalism and individual secular desires that dominate today’s political and social issues in Korea. Through performances, videos, and installations that adopt the format of one-person media broadcasts, the artist satirizes the entangled relationship between Korea’s unique traditional and folkloric values and its neoliberal social structures.

The ‘BigKing Travel‘ series, which Ryu began in 2017, uses a narrative and style rooted in black comedy to portray how Korea’s indigenous values—such as familism and shamanistic prosperity beliefs—are entangled with contemporary neoliberalism. 

The fictional filial-piety tour agency "BigKing Travel" targets Korea’s deeply rooted culture of hyo (filial duty) and caters specifically to elderly clients. The work depicts elderly tourists on a package tour abroad without their families, guided by a mysterious young foreign woman named Natasha, as they participate in a surreal version of a filial-piety tour.

The customers of BigKing Travel depicted in the work are exclusively elderly men, who form the narrative in opposition to Natasha, the young female service worker guiding them. While the elderly male clients pursue Natasha or objectify her sexually, Natasha regards them strictly as business targets, offering only capitalistic services in return.

In her solo exhibition 《BigKing Travel Ching-Chen Tour》 (Post Territory Ujeongguk, 2019), which marked the full-scale presentation of the ‘BigKing Travel’ series, Ryu invited audiences to experience a 30-minute compressed tour package set in the fictional resort nation of Ching-Chen. While the work outwardly adopts the form of a tour, it is in fact centered around the mysterious death of an elderly man.

Mr. Kim, an elderly man who dies from overexcitement after meeting BigKing Travel guide Natasha during a filial piety tour arranged by his son, reappears as a ghost in the 2019 Ching-Chen Tour. Rather than treating issues such as the sex industry and the commodification of filial piety with solemnity, Sungsil Ryu satirizes them through deliberately exaggerated fiction and crude staging. 

As a ghost, Mr. Kim wanders through a garish artificial nature filled with butterflies, flowers, waterfalls, and rainbows—cheap visuals drawn from low-budget package tours. Through this journey, the work presents a flamboyant and overstated surface of values such as paradise on earth, family, filial piety, death, and longevity, revealing their hollowness.

Following this, Sungsil Ryu brought the ‘BigKing Travel’ series into the realm of smartphones with BigKing Travel 2020, allowing users to experience the fictional tour of Ching-Chen in a more immersive and interactive way. 

Produced in the style of a simulation game, BigKing Travel 2020 unfolds as the audience taps the screen to progress through the tour. Seen from the perspective of an elderly male character, the game features a 360-degree rotating camera, allowing users to explore the dazzling tourist landscapes. Through touchscreen interaction, the viewer becomes an active participant in advancing the narrative.

However, the narrative of the work unfolds with the protagonist—an elderly man who serves as both the main character and the user's point of view—falling in love with the tour guide Natasha. This delusion culminates in a fantasy of lying with her, which ultimately leads to his death by heart attack.

Ascending to the afterlife, the old man, unable to let go of the explicit desires he held in life, pleads with his ancestors that he doesn’t want to die. Nevertheless, he is doomed to wander as a restless spirit. As a ghost, he finds himself at his own funeral, where he watches his granddaughter livestream a yukgaejang (spicy beef soup) mukbang on Instagram. He yells, “I’m not dead yet,” and “Don’t go around saying I died,” but his voice never reaches her—and the game comes to an end.

Art critic Jinshil Lee observed that what ultimately emerges from this bizarre tour is a heightened awareness of “the fact that the values considered wholesome and important in our lives are entangled with our unrelenting desires for material wealth and sex, and furthermore, that we are bound by the pervasive power of capital that exploits these desires as bait.” 

The dazzling, multicolored imagery of Ching-Chen Tour blatantly exposes the fetishistic nature underlying filial piety and the pursuit of blessings, reflecting the uncomfortable undercurrents of contemporary reality with a satirical edge that’s hard to laugh at.

Following the ‘BigKing Travel’ series, Sungsil Ryu created the avatar ‘BJ Cherry Jang,’ who began producing solo media broadcasts on internet video platforms. Much like ‘BigKing Travel,’ the ‘BJ Cherry Jang’ series obsessively mimics the sensationalist aesthetics and provocative editing styles typical of today’s one-person media culture—marked by exaggerated performances, crude visuals, and cheap production values.
 
Caked in white face powder and heavy makeup, Cherry Jang presents herself as the “world’s first first-class citizen,” the “Peaceful Unification Ambassador of the Korean People,” and a “Goodwill Ambassador for the International Peace Organization,” spouting blatantly fraudulent claims to draw attention.  

She refers to all adult South Korean men as “oppa” and publicly announces fake news—such as North Korea launching a nuclear missile at the South—while coercing viewers to deposit money in exchange for “citizenship in heaven.” The previously explored ‘BigKing Travel’ is also revealed to be one of her business ventures, connecting the two works within the same fictional universe.

Her livestreams are filled with blaring alert sounds meant to convey urgency, along with excessive captions, video clips, and numerous sources of dubious origin or authenticity—presented as if they are critical pieces of evidence. This exaggerated media performance sharply critiques contemporary issues around digital platforms, where anyone can hold a microphone and freely spread their opinions. 

By parodying the content production styles of solo media creators like YouTubers and BJs (Broadcasting Jockeys), Ryu satirizes not only these creators but also the media industry that markets to the consumption habits, beliefs, and emotional tendencies of today’s audiences. Through this, she lays bare the fragility of the countless pieces of fake news that circulate throughout modern media in a theatrically heightened manner.

Cherry Jang's broadcasts are overtly exaggerated in their fictional devices, but within them, elements drawn from actual reality are cleverly woven in. For example, when Cherry Jang decodes a North Korean random-number broadcast based on a number she received in a dream and analyzes the potential missile drop locations through feng shui, this scene mimics rumors and apocalyptic trends that circulated on the internet. 

Through performing the avatar of Cherry Jang, Sungsil Ryu does not merely imitate conspiracy theories and apocalyptic narratives. She skillfully employs marketing rhetoric to expose the neoliberal desires and strategies intricately entangled within them.

Cherry Jang, who appeared on the internet starting in 2018, is said to have passed away from overwork in 2019. However, her world continues even after her death. In Ryu’s 2022 solo exhibition 《The Burning Love Song》 at Atelier Hermès, a middle-aged businessman named Dae Wang Lee (Mr. Big King), who had once devoted himself to Cherry Jang, takes center stage. 

Dae Wang Lee is the former operator of Big King Travel, a company that corrupted filial piety tours into something materialistic and perverse, maximizing profits. Faced with the crisis in the travel industry due to the COVID-19 pandemic, he shifts his business focus to a pet funeral service company, capitalizing on a short lifecycle to generate extreme profits.

The exhibition borrows the procedures of a fictional funeral and cremation ceremony, inviting the audience to participate in the mourning ritual of a deceased pet. The brief 15-minute funeral procedure showcases how even death can be thoroughly commodified into a business item. Utilizing marketing concepts like 'prayer' and 'service,' which were passed down from her industry mentor, Cherry Jang, the exhibition also features Natasha, who has now switched careers to become an animal communicator. 

The world of Cherry Jang, continued through the narrative of Dae Wang Lee, persistently reveals the dark side of capitalism, where human desires and weaknesses are exploited for profit.

In this way, Sungsil Ryu’s black comedy sharply critiques the issues in contemporary Korean society while exposing the primal, intense desires for money and the vulnerability of ordinary individuals, including the artist herself, to these desires. Her works, though exaggerated and absurd in composition and direction, leave an uncomfortable feeling that cannot be easily dismissed, prompting reflection on the era in which we live.

 "My work is an extension of the situations in my personal life into a social context. From my perspective, my daily life feels like a continuous hyper-secular experience, and I feel an intense sense of fatigue from it. Instead of letting this fatigue flow out passively, I am seeking ways to sublimely transform it through my artwork."    (Sungsil Ryu, AliceOn – [Interview] Cherry Jang, Who is She?: Sungsil Ryu, February 29, 2020)

Sungsil Ryu graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Sculpture from Seoul National University and completed a Master’s degree in Sculpture at the same institution. Her solo exhibitions include 《RETURN TO ROOTS: A RETROSPECTIVE IN MEMORY OF CHERRY JANG (1984-2019)》 (TSA NY, New York, 2024), 《Big King Air New Engine Fundraising Drive》 (CYLINDER TWO, Seoul, 2023), 《The Burning Love Song》 (Atelier Hermès, Seoul, 2022), and 《BigKing Travel Ching-Chen Tour》 (Post Territory Ujeongguk, Seoul, 2019).
 
Additionally, Ryu has participated in numerous group exhibitions at domestic and international institutions, such as the Museum of Oriental Art (Turin, 2024), Kunsthal Aarhus (Aarhus, 2024), Nam June Paik Art Center (Yongin, 2024), Singapore Art Museum (Singapore, 2024), SONGEUN (Seoul, 2021), and ARKO Art Center (Seoul, 2020). 

Ryu has been selected as an artist-in-residence at the Seoul Art Space Geumcheon (2022), Singapore Art Museum Residency (2023), and DOOSAN Gallery International Residency Program (2024). She was also recognized as the youngest recipient of the 19th Hermès Foundation Missulsang. Her works are housed in prominent collections, including the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea; Seoul Museum of Art; Nam June Paik Art Center; and more.

References

• 류성실, Sungsil Ryu (Artist Website) 
• 두산아트센터(DOOSAN Art Center), Return to Roots: A Retrospective in Memory of Cherry Jang (1984-2019)
• 금천예술공장, [금천예술공장 13기 입주작가] 류성실 Sungsil Ryu 
• 헬로아티스트, 류성실 : 1인 미디어시대의 욕망과 불안을 패러디하기 – 이진실 
• 비평웹진 퐁, 과시와 추종에 사로잡힐지언정: 류성실 작가론 - 남웅
• 아뜰리에 에르메스, 불타는 사랑의 노래 (Atelier Hermès, The Burning Love Song) 
• 앨리스온, 체리 장, 그녀는 누구인가 : 류성실 Ryu SungSil, 2020.02.29