Soojin Chang’s video BXBY is a year-long performance project that merges forms of semi-fictional documentary and ritual practice, following Chang as a hybrid, shape-shifting being trying to learn to reproduce. Drawing from chimeric figures within creation stories of the British Isles and the diasporic cultures of Chang and her collaborators (Choulay Mech, Jade O'belle, Anika Ahuja, and Aditya Surya Taruna a.k.a Kasimyn), Chang positions her own hybrid body – part animal, part woman, part alien – as a site of technological interaction and as a locus of ongoing experiment. Sampling diverse scientific methods such as IVF, biohacking, and voluntary self-touch, BXBY addresses the legacy of colonial science to open out into wider affirmation of queer, interspecies kinship and reliance. From this position, BXBY aims to spur a purposeful discussion on notions of sacrifice, animality, objecthood and in/visibility; looking in particular to animist techniques of embodying and remembering.
BXBY
Soojin Chang
Project Overview
Exhibition Dates
Jerwood Arts, London - 7 May - 23 July 2022
Leeds Art Gallery - 18 November 2022 - 22 January 2023
Commissioned for the Jerwood/FVU Awards 2022: a collaboration between Jerwood Arts and Film and Video Umbrella in partnership with Leeds Art Gallery.
Film Credits:
Download PDF