Time, Body, and Silence
Sangghil Oh
Time-based artist | Body | Resistance | Trace | Silence
“What cannot be said—must be drawn, screamed, or scattered.”
The Eloquence of Silence
Some silences say more than any speech.
Unspoken emotions, unheard sentences,
erased traces and remaining voids—
these sometimes become a drawing,
a letter on the wall,
or a stillness of the body.
The works gathered here do not endure silence—
they construct it.
And so now, we quietly follow the political intensity of these voiceless languages, their formal resistance.
Reform of politics, 2004
headline lettering on the wall from the 26th São Paulo Biennale.
A certain Democracy, 2017
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Tens of thousands of news articles about the impeachment of former president Park Geun-hye—
categorized into 13 groups, color-coded, uploaded in real-time to Facebook and a blog.
Epilog, "ŁÓDŹ GHETTO", 1996
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neon, blacklight, bible, etc.
In January 1988,
at the Dachau Memorial in Germany,
and again through a documentary on the ŁÓDŹ Ghetto,
I encountered the madness of state power.
This work is a reflection
on the structure of oppression,
the sensation of silence,
and the closure of belief—
a meditation on systemic violence.
It is itself an epilogue.
In a cold, dark, blue-lit space,
viewers walk between electrified steel wires—
sensing the structures of light and shadow,
until they arrive at a question before the Bible:
“Whose silence is this?”
Hairlines of Controls, 1995
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wires, prisoner's hair
Hairlines of Controls, 1994
prisoner's hair, number punching on lead plates
Numbers, 1994
punching on lead plate, 61 x 40cm
Traces of fingertips,
a surface composed of countless hammer strikes—
become fields of sensation.