October 2024 / Survival Machine

Survival Machine

Eunsun Choi
Kyung-jin Kim
Althea Rao

October 03 - November 02, 2024
Opening Reception / Thursday, October 03, 5–8pm

Summer Hours:
Friday–Sunday, 12–5pm

“Now they go by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines.” 

― Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

Genes use the bodies of living things to further their own survival: to adapt to nature, to manipulate and collaborate with other species, to build artificial environments and create new ecosystems. These choices can lead to abundance or annihilation. We, the survival machines, can only speculate. 

Survival Machines presents such speculations from artists inhabiting the survival machines themselves. Kyungjin Kim’s work reflects on the natural selection for human vision. Blending reality and imagination, he created light sculptures based on the experience of inducing an artificial blind spot with a flash of light in his own eyes. Eunsun Choi seeks to understand the genetic evolution required for humans to overcome harsh environmental challenges. She will create hypersensitive organic-shaped kinetic sculptures that react to artificial stimuli, mirroring human vulnerabilities in response to natural influences. Althea Rao examines intelligence trained on cloud computing and data as disembodied memories. Her installation will restore organic bodies back to abstract data and cloud, and reflect on how natural phenomena reintroduce themselves back into the built environment and artificial ecosystems.

ARTIST BIOS //

Eunsun Choi is a multidisciplinary and conceptual artist born in Korea, currently living in Seattle. She is a graduate of the Hunter College MFA program and is currently pursuing her Ph.D. at the University of Washington in the DXARTS program. Recent solo installations and exhibitions include the 4 Culture, the Seattle Art Fair, Out of the Box gallery in Seoul, and the Thomas Hunter Project Space in NYC; her work has also been featured in numerous group shows in New York State, Queens, Brooklyn, and South Korea. Choi has participated in PLAYA Awarded residency in Oregon, NY+20 residency in Chengdu, the Sculpture Space Residency in Utica and the Hunter College Ceramic Residency. Her artist team, Jeju Island Artist Collective, was a recipient of the NYFA Queens Art Fund and City Artist Corp Grant in 2021.

Kyungjin Kim Art Institute of Chicago in 2016. Through sculpture, kinetic devices, and interactive sound installations, Kim inducts a sense of what cannot be known through palpable lapse and void. His work has been showcased at various exhibition venues, including Gallery MC (NY), Korean Cultural Center NY, MASS MoCA Open Studios (MA), Governors Island Art Fair 2018 (NY), Equity Gallery (NY), Hunter College Project Space(NY) and Slip Gallery (WA ). Kim has participated in artist residencies such as MASS MoCA (MA), Vermont Studio Center (VT), Flux Factory (NY), Sculpture Space in Utica (NY), and RU Residency program in New York. In 2022

Althea Rao is a multiform conceptual artist with a social practice. Her works exist as codes of conduct, performative interventions, multimedia installations as well as formal and informal gatherings, composting and dinner parties, repetitive manual labor. Rao has lived and worked in China, Japan and the US, and received training in journalism, media arts and filmmaking. She is a recipient of MAP Fund. She participated in fellowships and residencies at MIT Feminist Future(s) Hackathon, Theater MITU, More Art, Artspace New Haven, Flaherty Film Seminar, NYFA, Signal Culture, and Halcyon Arts Lab. In her spare time, Rao writes for Chinese readers about gender justice, as well as translating manifestos, film scripts and poetry between English and Chinese. Rao is currently a PhD Student at DXARTS in University of Washington.