Iden Sungyoung Kim is an artistic researcher who observes, investigates, documents, and reconstructs the political ironies of deep-rooted invisible regimes that have been perpetuated through the brutal repetition and transformation of human history after World War II. She explores the sociopolitical discourse and polarisation of nuclear research and aims to trigger critical reflection on current political, techno-ethical and ecological challenges through her video, photographic and installation works. Interested in the political narrative of micro-histories hidden in macro-histories, she has addressed socio-political debates on disability and the practice of care based on her own experience with physical disability.

Her works have been internationally presented and awarded in Berlin, London, Seoul, Venice, Stockholm, Beijing, Kyoto among others. After her residency at Cité internationale des arts in 2024, she is participating in Helsinki International Artist Programme in 2025.

Hypocenter, 2024

From Manhattan project to Fukushima nuclear accident, the terminology of a nuclear explosion has transformed with its political and ecological circumstances. As many other experiments in big science, nuclear research does not only demand enormous economical and academic resources but also political agreement because of its complexity and impact. It fundamentally involves multinational interests and therefore requires nuanced political negotiations.

Presented together with two-channel videos from the artist’s archival research, Kim’s photo and sound installation Hypocenter investigates the collective memory of imperialism and colonialism rooted in nuclear discourse. The term „hypocenter“ describes the spot where the nuclear tragedy changed the paradigm of humanity in politics, economics, and ecology. In Kim’s installation, analogue photographies of the cenotaph for Korean forced labours during Japanese colonial occupation are paired with alarm sounds from the geiger counter in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As a contemporary witness of the (post-)war generation, Hypocenter doesn’t only represent multi-layered post-colonial discourses. Through a documentary gaze and archival research, it also focuses on the dominant socio-political ethos  of the ongoing international conflict and the collective memory manifested in the imperialist narrative about historical minorities.