With works by Jiyoung Yoon

September 11, 2025 – January 4, 2026
Opening: September 10, 2025, 6 pm
daadgalerie, Berlin

Guided Tours:
Friday, November 7, 5:30 PM with Malte Roloff (in German and English)
Thursday, December 11, 6:00 PM with Melanie Roumiguière (in English)

The daadgalerie presents with Jiyoung Yoon: Seeing Things the Way We See the Moon, the first solo exhibition by Korean artist Jiyoung Yoon in Europe. The exhibition brings together around twenty sculptures and video works from 2012 to the present day – including new works created during her fellowship at the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program in 2023/2024.

In her multi-layered work, which moves between sculpture, installation, text and video, Yoon explores the boundaries of perception, memory and visibility. Her works revolve around the question of how (bodily) experiences – both personal and collective – can be translated into spatial and media forms and material languages. Her artistic vocabulary often moves on the threshold between objecthood and absence, between intimacy and social observation.

Many of her sculptural works are created from materials with bodily connotations such as wax or silicone, which Yoon transforms into poetic and fragile constellations. The resulting scenarios are often based on narratives around beliefs, behaviors, and verbal expressions that stem from a particular culture, mythology or religion. In the video works, the analysis of materials and form is combined with language and sound, questioning the relationship between body and environment, inner and outer reality.

At the center of Yoon’s practice is the tension between visibility and invisibility, perception and projection. As the title of the exhibition suggests – inspired by the poetic idea that we can only see the moon as the light makes it appear to us – Yoon investigates how meanings emerge, shift or remain hidden.

Some of the works shown in Berlin were first presented at the MMCA Seoul in 2024 as part of the shortlist exhibition for the Korean Art Prize. In the exhibition curated by Melanie Roumiguière at the daadgalerie, this work is now presented in an expanded context, together with earlier works that make visible her ongoing engagement with body, language and memory.

Download exhibition booklet

About the artist:
Jiyoung Yoon (*1984 in South Korea) lives and works in Berlin and Seoul. She studied fine arts in Seoul and Chicago. Her works have been shown at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), Seoul; Art Sonje Center, Seoul; and the Seoul Museum of Art, among others. In 2023/24 she was a fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program.

The production of the exhibition was sponsored by Korea Artist Prize Promotion Fund, from SBS Foundation and National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea.