▲ Trans-Human and Neo-Nomad artist Okran Ki

So called ‘neoanthropinae (new generation)’ has started nomadic life in new spaces and times. Also known as ‘trans-human’ are in search of our essence and reason of being with metaphors and symbols from the faraway source of the universe. I use collage materials to expose harmony and contrast between natural and artificial and the result might be an unfamiliar property of things but which are necessary in the digital era. I use stainless, Korean paper, computer parts, musical instrument and electric goods for this harmony and contrast in my ‘trans-human-neo-mad cyborg’. For human beings, settlement and nomad is like a variation of life as the two are bound up each other. We stay for leaving and we leave for staying. So we should find harmony in contrast between human and nature, reality and imagination, spirit and material and men and women. And this harmony pursues a mutual goal and that is humanity. – Artist’s note -

Trans-human

Artist Okran Ki has held 46 times of solo exhibitions home and abroad and participated in 60 international art fairs. Ki is famous for ‘trans-human’ and ‘neo-mad’ first introduced by French economist Jacques Attali in his book <L’hmme nomade>. 

Trans-human puts oneself in other’s shoe, opens one’s harbor to others or different ideas, prepares table for strangers, knows to be silent, to share and to listen, helps people in need and awaits for companions travelers. 

“The characteristics of trans-human are 1) NDA 2) Digital 3) Design 4) Divinity 5) 3Fs (Feeling, Female and Fiction) with which I deliver into my works for not losing enlightenment, the spirit of the time and sensitivity. If I explain this in the simplest term possible, they are ‘reconciliation’ and ‘communication’ which are needed to recover humanity and to push us one step forward to building a new society.”

Eulogized as ‘Korean Basquiat’

 Many of Ki’s trans-human works have been exhibited at the headquarters building of the Korea Electric Power Corporation for 3 years since 2015. Meanwhile, she displayed her works at the exhibition titled <Search for Korean Beauty> during the Vittel Biennale held at the Paris International Conference Hall in July last year. At the Independent Exhibition held at Grand Palais, she listed her name among the representative Korean artists by deepening the meanings of ‘trans-human’ and ‘neo-mad’. 

It is notable that her invitational exhibition at the Gallery Ohsong in Paris February this year attracted many visitors and art critics alike and she was eulogized as ‘Korean Basquiat’. Some others compared her with Pablo Picasso. The series of success and praise pushed her forward for various art fairs in London, Brussels, Hong Kong and Dubai as well as the Plas-Contemporary Art Show at COEX and another invitational exhibition at the Gwangju Veterans Hospital Gallery. 

Currently, the exhibition <Trans-Human and Neo-Mad> is being held at the Jangduck Library Gallery Gwangju until 13th October and two more exhibitions are arranged in New York this November and the Chonnam National University Art Space Gallery in May next year. 

“The goal of my exhibitions is to spread hopeful messages of reconciliation, communication, recovery of humanity and overcoming the fear of death.”