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Sojin Kwak

만지기, 구름에서 땅까지 Cloud to Ground | 2025 | 5’20”
Film by Sojin Kwak

Synopsis
Cloud to Ground (2025) captures a small Tesla Coil installed on the artist’s studio roof and the hand that appears to touch its electrical discharge. Through the camera’s perspective, the coil’s tiny needle resembles a towering lightning rod placed between distant mountain ridges beyond the rooftop. The act of tracing the path of aerial lightning with one’s hand becomes a momentary magic connecting sky and earth. As the sun crosses from cloud to ground at dusk, the artificial lightning and oversized hand continue a shadow play against the backdrop of sky and earth, oscillating between technology and nature, control and play. Here, the act of “making lightning” does not represent nature but rather exposes, in the form of play, the desire to produce and control it. The scale trick of the small device and the hand raises questions about how climate and energy are “made” and “managed,” suggesting that the power of the sky which we believe we control may in fact be constructed through images, devices, and the frame of vision.


About the artist
Sojin Kwak works with a variety of media, including video, performance, sculpture, and installation. Her work is based on research sparked by everyday walks, observations of her surroundings, and chance encounters. For Kwak, filming is an interactive and action-oriented practice in which the filmmaker’s body, the camera as a device, the subject, and the location mutually influence one another. She has held solo exhibitions at Replace Hannam (2025) and TINC (2021), and her work has been presented at the MMCA Performing Arts Program (2026), SeMA Performance Program at Seo SeMA (2026), The Willow (2024), OB/SCENE Focus (2024), and Frieze Film (2023), among others. In 2024, she received the Sisley Award for Young Creation.