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TJ Shin

Mugwort Along the Serpent’s Path</b>, 2023

Text

TJ Shin

flos aeris (part 1), 2023

Sound by Michelle Helene Mackenzie and TJ Shin, 5min

TJ Shin

Series from Untitled (Self-Portrait), 2021

Digital print from microscope scans

TJ Shin's web-based work, which consists of Mugwort Along the Serpent's Path (2023), flos aeris (part 1) (2023), and Series from Untitled (Self-Portrait) (2021), represents a seamless integration of three diverse art forms intertwined with Shin's imaginative story and research on postcolonial medicine, the globalized extractive economy, and invasive species. Through Mugwort Along the Serpent's Path, Shin narrates the story of Minjung, a biologist who travels to Madagascar to collect a plant specimen and is forced to navigate the jungle alone, which is also providing insight into Madagascar's pressing environmental issues and the oil industry's impact. The story explores the essence of life through Minjung's physical and mental metamorphosis as she becomes seemingly devoured by the jungle, nature. Through the experience of hallucination and a wild, feverish dream, the line between human and non-human, living and dead, becomes blurred as self-transmutation and the consumption of the Other are explored, raising questions about what constitutes life, dehumanizing, and "unbecoming human." The backdrop of this work presents digital scans of the artist's DNA transfected into mugwort, a species classified as invasive in North America. As the viewer scrolls down and delves deeper into the experience, the haunting hum of flos aeris (part 1) gradually comes into full prominence, its frequency of 18 kHz specifically tuned to repel mosquitos. This work blurs, questions, and queers traditional categories and boundaries, such as those between native and invasive species, human and non-human, living and dead, and self-destruction and self-creation.