Mooni Perry (b. 1990), a Berlin-based artist, has been exploring various allegories and discourses shaped by sociocultural contexts. Among these, she has focused on the concept of so-called "double-fallen" beings—those who belong to neither side of binary categories such as A or B—and has visualized the lives of such marginalized individuals through research-based video works.

In Mooni Perry’s work, the concept of the “double-fallen” refers to those who have been marginalized twice—figures who are the outsiders of the outsider. That is, she focuses on individuals who do not belong to either A or B, and thus are rendered “disobedient” or “nonconforming.” Mooni Perry views these disobedient existences as agents that disrupt the binary boundaries constructed by society, revealing within them the potential for new narratives. 

Grounded in this interest, the artist weaves narratives that traverse and blur socially constructed borders. For instance, her 2019 video work And They Begged Repeatedly Not to Order Them to Go into the Abyss explores the intersectionality of veganism and feminism, attempting to locate the gaps between things bound by fixed meaning.

In this work, the artist shifts focus from alterity as “the state of the other” to the other that already resides within the self—an other who is both “you” and “I,” a presence that prevents the self from remaining whole or coherent. Based on this broader notion of alterity, the “other” in the work extends beyond human difference to include animal beings such as pigs and sheep that appear throughout the piece. 

The work not only prompts reflection on coexistence with other species but also suggests that this process is far from seamless or idealized. Rather, it is noisy, messy, and discomforting—resisting romanticization.

In her 2021 solo exhibition 《Binlang Xishi》 at CR Collective, Mooni Perry explored allegories of contamination shaped by various socio-cultural contexts. The video work Binlang Xishi (2021) centers on figures who precariously exist on the margins of sex work.
 
The title of both the exhibition and the work, Binlang Xishi, refers to young women who sell betel nuts (檳榔)—a tropical fruit with stimulant and mildly hallucinogenic effects. Betel nuts have long circulated as a popular substance across Taiwan and East Asia, and their energizing properties made them especially favored by male manual laborers. 

To attract more customers, binlang xishi adopted provocative strategies, such as wearing revealing clothing and operating from small roadside booths. However, after the sale of betel nuts was outlawed in Taiwan in 2002, these women—already positioned on the threshold of sex work—were pushed further to the fringes of visibility and legality.

Through this work, Mooni Perry seeks to address what she calls “stained beings.” The binlang xishi, who have fallen twice—biologically and socioeconomically—from the standards of human normativity, are easily cast as so-called “dirty beings.” In response, the artist asks, “What is filth?” and, “Then what, exactly, is purity?” She challenges the binary logic that underpins notions of cleanliness and dirtiness, urging us to overturn and rethink these entrenched concepts. 

The video is structured into three chapters, each set in Korea, Taiwan, and Berlin. The first chapter, filmed in Korea, opens with a pansori performance. The singer chants about “fallen beings”—figures who drift in a suspended state, unbound by specific times or places.

Among the lyrics is a striking line: “Floating in the sky, I looked down at my body—my feet had turned into sweet potatoes, then corn, then winter melons and bottle gourds.” This imagery was inspired by Taiwanese writer Li Ang’s novel Seeing Ghosts. While reading the line “I hovered and looked at my body,” the artist drew a parallel with the dissociative experiences reported by many sex workers—specifically, the sensation of observing one’s own body from the outside, as a symptom of psychological detachment. 

In addition, the lyrics were informed by historical accounts of sex work in Korea, weaving together narratives that transcend time and geography. They summon the lives of those long labeled “dirty” or “fallen,” suggesting that such existences have always persisted, in different forms and contexts.

In the second chapter, filmed in Taiwan, the narrative of the Binlang Xishi unfolds in earnest. The video introduces two types of laborers within the betel nut industry: one is a farmer who cultivates the betel nuts, and the other is a service worker who sells them—the Binlang Xishi.
 
The farmer speaks about the history of “dirtiness” associated with betel nuts, lamenting the political and social regulations that have imposed a stigma upon the fruit. Though she does not say it directly, the Binlang Xishi likely represents, in his eyes, a “disruptive” presence that casts a shadow over the integrity of her labor.
 
Meanwhile, the two Binlang Xishi who run a roadside stand confront the perceptions that surround them, posing the following questions:
 
“Are Binlang Xishi unruly, impure beings?”
“And if so—why does that matter?”

In the video, Mooni Perry neither advocates for nor rejects any party based on binary notions of right and wrong. Instead, she presents the multitude of intertwined narratives that surround betel nut culture. Her approach to subverting the concept of “dirtiness” lies in identifying the gaps—those spaces that cannot be fully explained or contained by the binary that divides unsettling beings, including the Binlang Xishi.
 
The artist believes that these gaps—where various stories intersect and continuously slip—open up the possibility of a leap toward somewhere undefinable, beyond fixed categories. As a metaphor for this idea, Mooni Perry includes scenes of the Binlang Xishi in the video subtly smiling, as if privy to a secret, while passing through a “portal.” She also installs a large blue hole that fills an entire gallery window, symbolizing this threshold. 

These twice-fallen beings—those who have “fallen” both socially and biologically—enter a fragmented space beyond the portal, where there is no longer a top or bottom, no descent from cleanliness to filth. In this realm, the “fallen” no longer need to arrive anywhere, nor must they struggle to shed the stigma of impurity.

Following this trajectory, Mooni Perry initiated the video project ‘Missing: When My Dog Can’t Even Come Back As a Ghost’ (2021-), which explores the subject of pet cloning through the lens of loss and mourning, and further links the issue to surrogate labor, calling for a feminist reexamination of animal cloning practices. 

While discussions surrounding the animal cloning industry often revolve around ethical debates and animal rights—framed in binary terms of support or opposition—Mooni Perry instead approaches the topic through the emotional process of mourning and the concept of reincarnation.

Regarding pet cloning, the artist views it as an “artificial stitching” carried out to overcome the sense of loss and emptiness that comes from losing a beloved being. This psychological response raises questions about whether such artificial acts can truly mend the cracks—the ruptures in the world—and whether they even need to be mended at all.
 
Furthermore, the artist contemplates where the soul goes if the body of the lost being can be cloned. Focusing on Buddhist perspectives on death and the afterlife, the artist is particularly interested in the concept of the “bardo” (中陰身)—a spirit that neither enters the realm of the dead nor fully departs from this world, stuck in an intermediate state due to an inability to accept death and thus unable to enter the cycle of reincarnation. 

This bardo, a spirit existing between life and death, is metaphorically linked to cloned pets who, despite having completed their life, remain tethered to this world through the artificial stitching of biological replication.

Furthermore, Mooni Perry points out that the animal cloning industry is one that relies heavily on women’s bodies to function. This industry requires numerous female bodies for the sake of a single life, and in order to achieve a perfect clone, countless lives must be born consecutively and then sacrificed. 

The artist draws attention to the fact that, if these beings involved in animal cloning were human, the clients commissioning the clones would be socially and economically privileged individuals deemed worthy of replication, whereas the bodies of surrogate mothers are regarded as “consumable, replaceable necropolitical bodies”—that is, entities subjected to the politics of death and life.

In 2022, at the Kumho Museum of Art’s exhibition 《2022 KUMHO YOUNG ARTIST 2》, Mooni Perry presented a work titled Research with Me, Missing: When My Dog Can’t Even Come Back As a Ghost (2022). This piece combined a performance of script reading and sound based on research materials about the animal cloning industry, along with visual archival documents.
 
Comprising video, performance, and archival installation, the work intersects themes of disappearance and mourning, differing ontologies of the body, and stories related to reincarnation with the cloning industry. By linking this piece to the earlier work Binlang Xishi, Mooni Perry reveals overlapping points and the complex entanglement of multiple concepts between the two projects, exposing gaps that cannot be fully explained within a binary discourse. 

Subsequently, Mooni Perry developed this project into an East Asian-style fantasy narrative. The artist questions the connection between non-human entities and gender found within the element of “fantasticality,” which plays a significant role in classical East Asian literature. Moving between themes of disappearance, cloning industry, and religious reincarnation, the artist explores the bizarrely expanding boundaries and possibilities of the “self.”

At the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, currently hosting the exhibition 《Young Korean Artist 2025》, Mooni Perry is presenting a short fiction film titled EL (2025). This video project, created following research and filming conducted on-site in China, is based on research about Manchuria during the Japanese colonial occupation. 

The project centers on the stories of women from Joseon who migrated there by force or choice but were ultimately unable to return to their homeland. Shot at the Liaoning Hotel (formerly the Yamato Hotel) in Shenyang, China, a site closely associated with the establishment of Manchukuo, the film overlaps the reality and dreams of two protagonists, evoking the past and present of the people from Joseon in Manchuria.

While not driven by a specific storyline or direct historical recounting, the film conveys the weight of a history in need of recontextualization through its temporally saturated setting, the Liaoning Hotel, and the protagonists, who resist stereotypical depictions of Asian women in the modern era. Moving between past and present, dream and reality, Mooni Perry probes the complex strata of history and identity. 

Mooni Perry has conducted works based on research into Asian identity as a whole, including feminism, Taoism and tradition, and East Asian futurism. The artist weaves seemingly unrelated, fragmented elements vertically and horizontally to create a unique narrative. Her works feature beings that cross various boundaries and gaps, reminding us that the world we live in is a complex and hybrid place full of cracks that cannot be fully explained by simple binary logic.

 “Within the themes I explore, what can be called ‘gaps’ or ‘boundaries’ are very important. (…) When the mainstream defines A, and some existence slips away from A, it settles as B. But what I am truly interested in are those beings who slip once again from B.
 
I am fascinated by those ‘unsettling beings’ who are neither A nor B. I believe these beings become mechanisms that disrupt the smooth functioning of both A and B. And I think it is precisely within this unruliness that truly new stories begin.”    (Mooni Perry, from an interview with AliceOn) 

Mooni Perry graduated from the Department of Painting at Hongik University and completed her master’s degree at the Royal College of Art in the UK. Currently based in Berlin, she has been running the platform AFSAR since 2021 with multinational colleagues, sharing various research and creative activities.
 
Her solo exhibitions include 《Missings: From Baikal to Heaven Lake, from Manchuria to Kailong Temple》 (Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster, 2024–2025), 《Binlang Xishi》 (CR Collective, Seoul, 2021), 《Mooni Perry》 (Bureaucracy Studies, Lausanne, Switzerland, 2020), and 《Transversing》 (Post Territory Ujeongguk, Seoul, 2019). 

She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions such as 《Young Korean Artist 2025》 (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, 2025), 《Double:Binding:World:Tree》 (Post Territory Ujeongguk, Seoul, 2024), the 12th Seoul Mediacity Biennale (Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, 2023), 《The Fable of Net in Earth》 (ARKO Art Center, Seoul, 2022), and 《2022 KUMHO YOUNG ARTIST》 (Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul, 2022).

References

• 무니페리, Mooni Perry (Artist Website)
• 이상엽, [서문] 살아 있는 관계 (Rhii Sangyeop, [Preface] Living Relation)
• 앨리스온, [인터뷰] 불온한 존재들에 대하여 Part 1: 무니페리 Mooni Perry, 2022.06.27
• 탈영역 우정국, 무니페리 개인전_횡단 (Post Territory Ujeongguk, Monni Perry Solo Exhibition_Traversing)
• 씨알콜렉티브, [서문] 무니페리 개인전: 빈랑시스檳榔西施 (CR Collective, [Preface] Mooni Perry Solo Exhibition: Binlang Xishi 檳榔西施)
• 금호미술관, 2022 금호영아티스트 2부 (Kumho Museum of Art, 2022 KUMHO YOUNG ARTIST 2)
  
• 아르코미술관, 땅속 그물 이야기 (ARKO Art Center, The Fable of Net in Earth)
• 탈영역 우정국, 이중:작동:세계:나무 (Post Territory Ujeongguk, Double:Binding:World:Tree)