“I wanted to be different from anyone, including myself”
by Youngho Kang
Performance artist Youngho Kang’s series of elaborate self portraits, 99 Variations, is featured this week in the Istanbul Photo Festival.
T o be honest I don’t have a special concept for my work. There is only one thing: I wanted to change my identity from a commercial photographer to a fine art artist. So firstly I had to answer, starting with my spirit about “What is art?” For me, that was very simple. “Art for me is to concentrate on the things that only I can do.” I really wanted to be different from anyone, including myself. “99 Variations,” so to speak, is started by me running away from myself.
My figure and camera are always revealed in one frame. My works stem from two oxymoronic kinds of desire: Separating and creating another self from my realistic self, and at the same time, connecting them. In my case I used the mirror to discover my other selves, while at the same time I used the camera to place them in my memory again.
The relationship between the mirror and I is subconscious, which helps me imagine. The relationship between the camera and I is conscious, which helps me to memorize. So to speak, I can see the images are 99% different and separated from realistic self by the mirror, but finally I can recognize them all as myself, thanks to the camera. This means, the mirror expanded my amount of selves, while the camera maintained the mass of my selves.
