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This artist puts audiences at the centre of her digital creations

Inhwa Yeom uses XR and AI to create artworks offering social commentary; catch her at the Hong Kong Arts Centre’s ‘Future Tense’ exhibition

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Inhwa Yeom uses XR and AI to create artworks offering social commentary; catch her at the Hong Kong Arts Centre’s “Future Tense” exhibition. Photo: courtesy Inhwa Yeom
Aaina Bhargava
“Operating at the intersection of art and technology” is a near-ubiquitous phrase, often trotted out to define the work of digital artists. Ambiguous and overused, yes, but it’s also where South Korean media artist Inhwa Yeom draws the most freedom.

“I don’t think you should have to choose between learning one or the other,” says Yeom. “They’re both just forms of expression.”

For Yeom, “new” and “old” are equally fraught. “I don’t even like to call myself a ‘new’ media artist,” she says. “I don’t think there should be a dichotomy between old or new media – technology changes every day.”

In addition to her art practice, Yeom is a researcher and the founder of BiOVE, a biotech and bioart start-up, where she aims to increase accessibility in medical, rehabilitative, therapeutic and creative-learning experiences through extended reality, or XR, and artificial intelligence-powered interactive systems.

“Future Tense”, an exhibition at the Hong Kong Arts Centre, explores lesser-known stories of the city’s cultural heritage, reimagined in the future. Photo: Handout
“Future Tense”, an exhibition at the Hong Kong Arts Centre, explores lesser-known stories of the city’s cultural heritage, reimagined in the future. Photo: Handout
Yeom is in Hong Kong for “Future Tense”, an exhibition that opened at the Hong Kong Arts Centre on March 1. The show explores lesser-known stories of Hong Kong’s cultural heritage reimagined in the future, with the added effects of social shifts, climate change and urban development.

“The genesis of this project came from how we make up or adapt these stories based on our memories,” says exhibition director Ray LC. “The exhibition is not about technology. It’s about the nature of how we preserve cultural heritage and stories. We use technology to express how we reimagine the future, as you’ll see in Inhwa’s work – she uses imagery to speculate.”

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