In her film and multimedia installations, Hana Yoo explores the collective anxiety and transcendental experiences that arise when perspectives bend and reverse. Women, animals, and representations of nature appear as symbolic protagonists who have historically been objectified, exploited, and controlled. Their presence reveals the power structures embedded in technologies, institutions, and cultural stereotypes, exposing the tools through which oppression is maintained. An important reference in her work is the poetry publication A Cruelty Special to Our Species (2018) by South Korean poet Emily Jungmin Yoon, which brings to light the historical reality of Japan’s sexual slavery of Korean ‘comfort women’ during the Second World War, and amplifies the voices of  survivors and the ongoing impact of their experiences. Yoo’s film I Came for the Flowers (2025) similarly pays homage to these women by bridging human and non-human experiences with footage of a study showcasing tonic immobility (or feigning death), a survival tactic used by female European common frogs to avoid mating. The passivity of playing dead is reimagined through dream-like sequencing, natural environments, and poetry, allowing the histories of these women—and the intergenerational effects and memories of gender-based violence—to unfold across time and emotionally ambiguous spaces. Her second film, I Drank a Magic Potion, but I Didn’t Die: Kim Bok-Dong (2026) establishes a dialogue with the archive of the War and Women’s Human Rights Museum in Seoul, foregrounding the testimony of Kim Bok-Dong, as a form of intergenerational care and responsibility. Yoo invites us to reflect on the violence endured by the so-called ‘comfort women’ and to engage with them instead as ‘grandmothers’, opening space for new vocabularies and alternative forms of affection and empathy.

I Drank a Magic Potion commissioned by Haus der Kulturen der Welt. Co-produced by Hana Yoo and HKW, 2026

Works in the exhibition: I Came for the Flowers (2025), 1-channel video, sound, colour, 9' 15", Korean with En/Ger subs.; I Drank a Magic Potion, but I Didn’t Die: Kim Bok-Dong (2026), 1-channel video, sound, colour, 7', Korean with En/Ger subs. Both courtesy of the artist