Yaloo: Shininho
Korea, 2024
Duration: 10 min
Language: English
Courtesy of the Artist
South Korean artist Yaloo’s holographic installation Shininho is a speculative marine adventure that captures the journey of 86-year-old K-pop idol and pirate, ‘Shin In-ho’. The legacy of Zheng Yi Sao (1775–1844), a woman of Chinese descent and the most successful pirate in history, inspired Yaloo’s fictional protagonist. In this work, Shin In-ho captains a pirate ship navigating the Pacific Rim, retracing the historic trade routes that once connected Korea and the United States, where Yaloo is currently based. Reimagining Piracy—with its centuries-old pursuit of profit through exploration—in contemporary terms, Yaloo positions the K-pop idol as a modern counterpart to the profit-driven pirate. Shin In-ho and her crew embark on a mission to steal memories for a data centre, prompting reflection on whether, in our digital age, data has become the world’s most sought-after treasure.
The flickering holographic projection evokes both the glow of advertising screens and the spectral presence of a person who has never existed or is deceased. Shin In-ho’s physical appearance is modelled on motion-capture scans of the artist’s grandmother, animated through MetaHuman 3D technology. This act of digital archiving adds to the narrative, incorporating the process of transforming a family member into data. Through her dynamic digital collages, Yaloo reflects on the construction of legacy, identity and history in Asian and American capitalistic societies.
Yaloo is a South Korean artist based in Los Angeles who works across digital media, moving image and installation. Through her practice, she explores contemporary consumer culture, folklore and symbolism within the context of her Asian cultural heritage. Utilising new technologies and techniques of worldbuilding, she constructs multi-faceted narratives that make unexpected links within capitalism visible, inviting viewers to reflect upon their experiences of everyday life. She graduated in video art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and teaches at the Department of Experimental Animation, School of Film/Video, California Institute of the Arts. Yaloo was awarded the Lyn Blumenthal Memorial Scholarship by Video Data Bank, the Gold Prize in visual arts from the AHL Foundation in New York, and the Gyeonggi MoMA & IBK Young Artists Award. Her work has recently been exhibited at The Photographers Gallery, London, UK (2024-2025); SongEun Art Center, Seoul, KR (2024); Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art (GMoMA), KR (2024); and FACT Liverpool, UK (2022).
