Ghost Motion: Minji Yi
Gallery Chosun presents Minji Yi’s solo exhibition 《Ghost Motion》 from June 24 to July 9, 2021. In this show, Yi records bodies as observed through the tangled time of the pandemic, using photography, video, and text. In a period when movement is restricted and awareness of one’s own and others’ bodies intensifies, she focuses on the subtle vibrations and gestures of the body.
The exhibition title Ghost Motion, refers to annotated movements in music: small, precise gestures a drummer makes to keep time with a piece. Similarly, a yoga practitioner listens to their breath as they repeat movements, and a musician subtly moves their lips to mark rhythm, replaying their personal timeline
Yi’s work continues her exploration of the space between “seen” and “unseen”, capturing the body and its sensations. Still frames, sequences that flicker between clarity and blur, and retinal gestures evoke what is often lost in photography; afterimages, sound, vibration, and touch. The photographer’s ghost motion aligns these lapses, connecting past sensations stored in the body with the imagined gestures that extend from it.
The artist follows the idea often associated with Vilém Flusser, exploring the position of the photographer within space and time. Across this shifting timeline, she traces the faint gestures, fleeting movements, and subtle traces of the body, making them present again while revealing the link between perception, memory, and imagination.
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In a time where movement has stopped, I often traced the paths of the body. The moving body and eyes lingered around a single point or passed through screens to reach distant scenes, distant moments. What was seen in this tangled timeline blurred the boundaries between body and gaze. A square stripped of sound, flames without heat, the wind heard beyond a dark, obscured screen, breath rising and falling beneath masks, all evoked the afterimages held in the body. These traces arrived anew each time, from different times, places, and bodies, reaching the body and eyes positioned here
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Afterimages rise and fall beneath the eyelids, repeating endlessly. A still body vibrates subtly, recalling embodied memories. Ghost Motion. A yoga practitioner listens to their breath while repeating movements, a musician moves their lips minutely to count rhythm, a photographer captures what is lost between moments. The body’s subtle shifts anchor presence, propel action, and focus attention between remembered and imagined scenes. Ghost Motion replays these delicate timelines where afterimages linger over and over.
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Invisible gestures sometimes summon what is otherwise unseen. They lie just beneath the surface of the photograph. Repeatedly revisiting afterimages, the paths of breath, the waves of sound, and traces of touch resurface. In these moments, the timeline fixed in a photograph sends afterimages bodily memory drifting toward other places, other times. Where do these distant scenes arrive? Where do the coordinates of the body and eyes reach, vibrating at such subtle speeds? Ghost Motion evokes what has passed while aligning the rhythm of what is to come, and then disappears.