Mimi Youn is a visual artist working and living in Seoul. She is interested in time, space and how memory and lives are reflected in photographs. In her practice she collects various images, including abandoned and archival pictures, which she uses as the basis of her work. She creates her own narrative by disassembling and recombining the traces of the past in those collected photographs.

During her residency at GlogauAIR, Mimi has compiled old images: portraits, holiday snapshots and family photos in Flea markets. Once, these photographs were cherished by people, but now they are abandoned. To Mimi, this evokes astonishment, ambiguity and stirs up psychological emotions such as nostalgia, sadness and pain. She regards photographs as a link between the outside world and human being’s inner desires. She tries to bring back and meditate about lost time, memory and past lives using photographs. 

Apart from the images collected in Berlin, for this project she is also using her own family photos and photographs she has taken. Her goal is to create a flow based on her imagination in which she wanders without knowing the final destination. She connects old and new images like she plays puzzles, and invites the viewer into the times and memories she has created.

For Virtual Open Studios, Mimi collaborated with the artist Vincent Laju. He improvised Shakuhachi sound according to the composition and flow of Mimi’s work.