GGOKTU-GAKSI, Put Your Hand into Me (2025) (☑️)
GGOKTU-GAKSI (꼭두각시) means “wooden doll” in Korean, a figure animated by strings or a guiding hand, caught between autonomy and submission. Growing up in South Korea, Pyeori Jung observed how discipline and play are braided together, games in childhood reinforced obedience, rigid education and mandatory military service ingrained a sense of control over movement.
The first puppet show Pyeori saw was in a classroom: a teacher pacing, striking his own back with a ruler as he observed students. His repetitive motions became predictable, and the children instinctively turned his act into a game.
For GGOKTU-GAKSI, Put Your Hand into Me, Pyeori Jung and Paloma Bouhana gathered five artists to explore the balance between individual expression and collective discipline, asking: Who pulls the strings? The exhibition questions autonomy, submission, and resistance, revealing the unseen hands that shape movement—both on stage and in life.
During the opening night, Angélique Aubrit & Ludovic Beillard’s life-sized handcrafted puppets waver between control and independence, guided by an unseen voice. * Angyvir Padilla’s 3D-printed sculptures, embedded in blue sand, emerge from a collaboration with her mother—objects from their home in Caracas transformed into translucent childhood relics. * Bin Koh’s Field Trip, a blackboard triptych borrowing from Cézanne’s The Large Bathers, meditates on birth, utopia, and death. * Laure Prouvost’s Metal Man— a surreal hybrid of human and machine—points forward like a puppet freed from its strings yet still bound by mechanics. * Pyeori Jung revisits his teacher’s disciplinary tools, examining how puppetry mirrors broader societal structures. * Paloma Bouhana presents four sculpted figures created by her young students, a playful challenge to artistic authorship and labor, opening space for creation unburdened by constraint.
Curators:
Pyeori Jung
Paloma Bouhana
Participated Artists:
Angyvir Padilla
Bin Koh
Laure Prouvost
Pyeori Jung
Paloma Bouhana
Angélique Aubrit & Ludovic Beillard
Graphic Design:
Anton Stuckardt
Supported by:
Gemeente Rotterdam Cultuur Fund
At Ease (2025, as a part of exhibition artworks)
Mixed Media
Pyeori Jung’s work reconstructs memories of control under a middle school guidance teacher through the reconfiguration of objects and space. This piece aesthetically explores the dynamics of authority and submission, revealing the fluidity and fictionality of memory. The recreated teacher’s office and its objects emerge as familiar yet alien presences, dismantling functional hierarchies and imbuing them with new meanings. By sublimating memories of punishment and control into aesthetic forms, the artist invites viewers to reflect on the layered implications of authority and the fragility of memory.
Notably, the work confronts the subtle yet pervasive forms of violence that persist in contemporary education, contrasting with the overt brutality of past educational practices. The power imbalances inherent in hierarchical teacher-student relationships erode creativity, and while rejecting such authority might seem like a solution, the work underscores the structural limitations that make this difficult to practice. The artist resists reducing the experience of control to mere pain, instead expanding it into a complex interplay of love and dominance. Simultaneously, the piece critically examines the hidden violences within modern educational systems and their stifling effects on creativity, offering a poignant commentary on the enduring struggles within institutional power dynamics.