Shinhye You: Selected works, 2025-2026
These fairies are the souls of the dead, reborn as translucent winged creatures. Fragile and harmless, yet they contain unresolved sorrow and resentment that can curse the ones who dare to kill them.
I started making them during a residency in Jingdezhen, China, in the summer of 2025. Growing up in Korea, summer was always filled with the desperate singing of cicadas. After spending most of their lives underground, cicadas emerge only to scream their final love song before death. I have always found the nature of cicadas tragic. And when my fellow artist Reiko saw my work, she said it reminded her of the forest of cicadas she loved as a child—a place that has since been turned into a parking lot, burying countless cicada nymphs alive beneath the concrete.
And I think of all the beings that were killed without ever having the chance to resist. Under bombs, beneath gun barrels, and in the midst of deaths filled with grief and unresolved sorrow. I dedicate these fairies to all of them.
Captions
- The Visitors, 2025, Jade Porcelain, 1280 reduction, 120x120cm installation. Photo by Chuan Fa
- Nine Tails, 2025, Jade Porcelain, 1280 reduction, 15x15x9cm. Photo by Chuan Fa
- No, I Won’t Forgive You, 2025, Jade Porcelain, 1280 reduction, 15x12x15cm. Photo by Chuan Fa
- And Everyone Stared at The Moon, 2025, Jade Porcelain, 1280 reduction, 19x24x16cm. Photo by Chuan Fa
- Look Away, There Is A Mirror, 2025, Jade Porcelain, 1280 reduction, 7x9x12cm. Photo by Chuan Fa
- No Love for Dreamers, 2025, Jade Porcelain, 1280 reduction, 12x12x12cm. Photo by Chuan Fa
- No, I Won’t Forgive You 2, 2025, Jade Porcelain, 1280 reduction, 15x12x15cm. Photo by Chuan Fa
- The Lake, 2025, Jade Porcelain, 1280 reduction, 16x19x19cm. Photo by Chuan Fa
- Firm Boundary, 2026, Parian 1240 oxidation, 15x10x17cm. Photo by Shinhye You
- Give n Take, 2026, Parian 1240 oxidation, 17x17x16cm. Photo by Shinhye You
