Time, Body, and Silence
Sangghil Oh
Time-based artist | Body | Resistance | Trace | Silence
“What cannot be said—must be drawn, screamed, or scattered.”
Device of Anonymity:
Memories of Fragmented Bodies
A fragment of the body, cut by the frame—
it was meant to collapse the boundary
between observer and observed.
It was my body reflecting yours—
at once the self and the other,
the place where everything begins, and ends.
Anonymous mirror, 1993
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pigment print, 160 x 100cm
A body that is both you and I.
Neither male nor female—
just a bare shell of being.
All beginnings came from there.
And all ends return to that place.
Spitting, 1997
single channel video installation, sound
A man with white makeup covering his face
spits toward the camera.
I wanted that spit to pierce the screen
and land on the viewer’s face.
It wasn’t insult.
Nor anger.
It was a mischievous breath of art—
a grin from a bratty phantom.
Just 23 seconds.
A raw, unfiltered moment captured on tape—
projected directly, with more precision than any staging.
Torn flesh, 1998
single channel video installation, no sound
When I heard of a pornographic film titled Torn Flesh,
I wasn’t repulsed—
I was intrigued.
My work often hovers between coincidence and inevitability.
This piece was conceived alongside Skin Licks.
It was meant to reveal, doubly:
the excesses of human narcissism,
the secrecy of self-harm,
and the narratives, traces, and temporalities they leave behind.
The opportunist’s eye, 1999
single channel video installation, no sound
A single eye shifting once from side to side.
That movement repeats,
mirrored like a reflection.
Time stacks itself in layers of contradiction.
The deconstruction of time and norm—
not just a slogan.
Before I knew the irrational number algorithm,
I manually cut and spliced frame after frame—
shedding time
to break time itself.
All the while,
the opportunist’s eye was silently watching.
Someone in the box, 1999
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five channel video installation, no sound, glass box, tracing papers
CCTV body, 1995
VHS tape recording, no sound
The back of someone,
silent from behind a wall—
monitored by a CCTV camera.
The image repeated endlessly.
Surveillance is always mute.
Repetition, often violent.
This video was originally designed
for installation within a sealed wall.
But due to budget cuts,
the wall disappeared.
And the body,
once again, was confined
somewhere within the monitor.
Scar Poem, 1997
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pigment print, 160 x 90cm
Water seeping into a burn scar—
That day, I chose to witness and record
the healing of my own body.
All my works begin from such impulses—
unbearable poetic moments
that erupt from the gap between body and time.
Objects, photographs, videos, drawings—
they are fragments of a body and mind overflowing.
Traces of the time that passed through me.
Not merely ‘things made’,
but quiet responses
to what was truly lived.