TZUSOO (b. 1992), a digital native, has been developing a unique artistic language rooted in new identities formed at the intersection of the cyber ecology and the real world. Her work evolves across various media, including video, installation, sculpture, and painting. 

With her characteristically sharp perspective and wit, TZUSOO explores the essence of existence, weaving personal narratives into issues of discrimination, gender, human rights, and emerging blind spots in the digital age.

TZUSOO has constructed a hybrid worldview by creating virtual beings that transcend various binary boundaries, including those between the body and matter. From a young age, TZUSOO dreamed of becoming both an "artist" and a "mother," and in 2019, she presented Schrödinger’s Baby, a work in which she conceived a child within digital reality. 

This piece parallels the worldview of Schrödinger’s cat paradox, in which a cat is simultaneously alive and dead until observed, at which point its state collapses into one outcome. Believing that the digital world exists on equal footing with the physical world, TZUSOO asserts that her baby both exists and does not exist.

TZUSOO’s baby exists only in virtual reality and cannot be observed in the physical world. As such, it is a hybrid being in which all probabilistically possible states coexist. For example, the baby exists in a state of infinite potential—its skin color, date of birth, paternity, and even whether it is a daughter, a son, or a third gender are all undetermined. 

TZUSOO inserts sounds directly recorded from her own uterus, heart, belly, and esophagus into a space unconstrained by the laws of physical reality. Within this space, she presents the images of the growing fetus at 4, 8, and 16 weeks of pregnancy in the format of a triptych.

After the artist’s biological age surpassed thirty, TZUSOO began bringing the babies she had conceived in the digital world into the physical realm. Through her 2023 series ‘Agamon,’ a project that translates “digital beings” into “material forms,” TZUSOO’s child enters reality as a monster made from agar and moss. 

The birth of Agamon subverts the Christian doctrine deeply rooted in the physical world regarding childbirth and women. In Christian history, women who become pregnant and give birth—namely Mary—have been idealized by the contradictory concepts of the “virgin” and the “mother,” reinforcing a dichotomy that separates the image of sex from that of childbirth.

In contrast, TZUSOO deliberately connects sex and childbirth. Her children, the Agamons, are life forms born at the moment of female orgasm, emphasizing the implicit relationship between female sexual desire—so often deemed blasphemous—and the sanctity of childbirth. 

Since 2024, Agamon has been born not only with bodies made of agar but also of stone, wood, and other materials. In this way, TZUSOO continues to translate the entropy of pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting into sculpture, fulfilling her instinctual drive to create and give birth, while attempting to bridge materiality and maternal affection.

Although born as a child of a human, these hybrid life forms—composed of various non-human organisms—become entities that disrupt and fracture the unequal binary logic operating in the real world. Alongside this, TZUSOO has given birth to another virtual being: Aimy Moon, a virtual influencer and activist. 

Aimy, a virtual human, was originally commissioned by an AI-based music company. However, the artist has shared in interviews that she initially considered rejecting the proposal. She was reluctant to reproduce the familiar imagery of the cyborg in the digital world—one that is often female, in her twenties, and conforms to conventional beauty standards repeated in popular media.

However, having long been immersed in questions of digital identity, TZUSOO began to envision Aimy as a multi-layered character who could exist in both the realms of pop music and contemporary art—telling different stories in each. This led to the creation of the Aimy universe. In this world, Aimy appears by day as a stereotypical virtual influencer beloved by the capitalist market, while by night she transforms into a bald-headed virtual activist with nipple piercings. 

Currently, Influencer Aimy commands tens of thousands of followers on platforms like ZEPETO and Instagram and is registered as the copyright holder of more than 48 songs. Meanwhile, the Aimy who returns home takes off her wig and clothes, reviews her own influencer content, and swipes through Tinder to meet other virtual influencers.

Born from the hands of an entertainment company (capital) and TZUSOO (the artist), Aimy refers to herself as an illegitimate child, despite having been created by humans. Declaring her independence from her human creators, Aimy defines herself as a trans-boundary cyborg—"neither woman nor man, neither human nor machine, racially free and capable of telling her own story"—within the digital world.

The video work The Cyborg Manifesto (2021) marks the first chapter of virtual activist Aimy’s story, in which she reads aloud Donna J. Haraway’s seminal 1985 text, A Cyborg Manifesto. In an interview, TZUSOO remarked that Haraway’s writing feels more relevant than ever to our generation, which lives in an era saturated with digital and virtual imagery.
 
Haraway proposed the figure of the cyborg—a hybrid and a monster of machine and organism—as a way to transcend human-centered binary structures. Today, we are more intimately connected, both emotionally and psychologically, with virtual beings—cyborgs—than at any point in human history. Yet TZUSOO questions whether we have truly moved toward the post-binary hope that Haraway envisioned, or if we are merely repeating the same forms of discrimination in virtual spaces that we were unable to overcome in the physical world. 

By re-voicing Haraway’s text through the mouth of a non-human virtual character, TZUSOO expresses this ambivalence and critique. In doing so, Aimy declares herself to be a cyborg—within a realm of infinite potential where she can become anything.

Through Aimy’s cyborgian characteristics, TZUSOO develops a practice that disrupts fixed frameworks of perception—such as traditional gender binaries. For example, in her two-poster series ‘Aimy’s Betrayal’ (2021), TZUSOO references the conventional iconography of the Virgin Mary with hands clasped in prayer, yet presents Aimy in two contrasting images. In doing so, she visualizes the polar extremes of female representation.

Sigmund Freud’s Madonna–whore dichotomy is a cultural critique theory that highlights how women’s images in culture, art, and literature are limited to two consumable roles: the revered ‘Madonna’ and the despised ‘whore.’  

‘Aimy’s Betrayal’ critiques the repetition of this Madonna–whore dichotomy even within digital spaces, conveying a message that transcends simple affirmation or negation. Instead, it embraces the diverse spectrum of female existence and delivers a powerful call for bodily liberation.

Meanwhile, The Eden (2021) is a video work that unfolds a vision of a cybernetic “Eden,” depicting a world free from the archetypal binaries of traditional Eden paradigms—such as male and female, good and evil, sacred and secular. TZUSOO digitally reinterprets the surreal portrayal of Eden by Hieronymus Bosch from the 20th century, reflecting on multiple realities that can coexist: reality, fantasy or hallucination, trials, and the ideals and secrets of unknown cyborgs within Eden.

Moreover, Aimy addresses various contemporary issues arising from the entanglement of reality and virtuality. For example, she reviews her own videos as a virtual influencer and poses skeptical questions about how virtual influencers’ images are consumed one-dimensionally within capitalism (The Review, 2021). She also discusses the impact of digital images on humans and explores the nature of virtual identity (Tinder, 2021).

In 2024, Aimy reappears in artworks depicted as being pregnant. Aimy The Pregnant (2024) revisits the meaning of technology through human's 'pregnancy.' With generative Al, we have had to acknowledge that creation is no longer the exclusive domain of humans. However, the creation of a life form or 'pregnancy' is something that cannot be over­come by machines or technology, and it still maintains human uniqueness.
 
TZUSOO revisits this state of pregnancy through the history of technology. Pregnancy can be compared to a function and technology in itself, holding some­thing or often in a state of emptiness. Howev­er, it has been overlooked in the history and philosophy of technology. The artist's view of pregnancy as an essential human skill subverts masculinist narratives and thinking about tech­nology, offering a new proposal for a history of technology that is being recalibrated in the con­text of Al.  

The artist presents the figure of the pregnant Aimy in the familiar short-form format to reveal the unfamiliar image of pregnancy. In doing so, she questions the possibilities left to humanity in terms of generation or technology.

TZUSOO continuously creates and “births” artworks that explore various phenomena and the structural blind spots entangled between reality and the virtual in the digital age. Her practice symbolically highlights the fundamental differences between the cyber ecosystem and the material world while dynamically unfolding the organic tension shared by the processes of “creation” and “birth.” 

Her work carries her personal narrative of fulfilling her desire to become a mother through artistic creation, while also reflecting contemporaries who dwell mentally in the digital world yet physically in the material body. This offers a critical space to reconsider today’s relationship between technology and reality.

 “I have harbored the desire to become a mother for as long as I can remember. However, as I embarked on my journey toward independence as an artist, this dream became increasingly elusive. Nevertheless, I find solace in fulfilling my enduring longing through my artistic creations, considering them akin to my children and taking a lot of care.”    (TZUSOO, Artist’s Note) 

TZUSOO earned her bachelor's degree from the Art College of Hongik University in Seoul and completed her diploma at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart, Germany. Her solo exhibitions include 《Alma Redemptoris Mater: Our Material Our Redeemer》 (sangheeut, Seoul, 2023), 《The Most Faithful Blasphemy》 ((together)(together), Seoul, 2022), 《I Feel Uncanny When You Touch Me There》 (Wunderkammer, Stuttgart, Germany, 2022), 《Schrödinger’s Baby》 (Schaufenster Junge Kunst, City Gallery of Sindelfingen, Sindelfingen, Germany, 2021), and more.

The artist has participated in numerous group exhibitions at international institutions, including the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (Cheongju, 2024), Calm and Punk Gallery (Tokyo, 2024), Hessel Museum of Art (New York, 2023), HITE Collection (Seoul, 2022), Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art (Ansan, 2022), Culture Station Seoul 284 (Seoul, 2021), and Kunstmuseum Stuttgart (Stuttgart, 2021). 

TZUSOO was selected as a guest artist for the 2020 residency at Electro Putere Gallery in Craiova, Romania. In 2019, she participated in the V2_Lab for the Unstable Media X Art Centre Nabi Residency in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Additionally, the artist was chosen as the inaugural artist for the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea’s “MMCA X LG OLED Series.” Her solo exhibition is scheduled to open this August at the Seoul Box, Seoul branch of the MMCA.

References

• 추수, TZUSOO (Artist Website)
• 국립현대미술관, [보도자료] 국립현대미술관, 《MMCA X LG OLED 시리즈 2025》 초대 작가 추수(TZUSOO) 선정 (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA), [Press Release] MMCA Select TZUSOO as Inaugural Artist for MMCA X LG OLED Series)
• 이규식, ‘사이보그 선언문’ 작품 설명글 (Gyusik Lee, ‘The Cyborg Manifesto’ Artwork Description)
• 비애티튜드, 빡빡머리의 버추얼 액티비스트 에이미
• 국립현대미술관, 예측 (불)가능한 세계 – 추수 ‘임산부 에이미’ 작품 설명글 (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA), What an Artificial World – TZUSOO ‘Aimy the Pregnant’ Artwork Description) 
• 상히읗, [서문] 존귀하신 물질이여 (sangheeut, [Preface] Alma Redemptoris Mater:  Our Material Our Redeemer)