Connecting people through art 

Two-channel 4K video installation, color, sound, 39 min 6 sec

Commissioned by the 16th Gwangju Biennale, co-produced by the Han Nefkens Foundation and Blindspot Gallery.

Ratchet Drill (2026) centers on a group of young people in an abandoned theater, deliberating over the next steps of an action—a well-known uprising that took place in Asia, one that can be openly discussed, is being gradually reenacted within this safe house. Yet as their agitation mounts and the arguments sharpen, the developments of the movement begin to subtly drift from the memory everyone carries and historical details. This unfolding uprising seems to summon another uprising—one that occurred in a different time and place but has been concealed by history.

The young people’s actions come to an abrupt halt amid an unstoppable trend toward radicalization and eventual collapse, while these unknown historical fragments are suddenly revealed as a theatrical rehearsal about the alienation of history in the present time. A marginal character among the actors—a transgender girl who, after completing her compulsory military service, receives a recall notice for annual reserve training and decides to return to the military in her new body—gradually realizes that her intimate personal bodily experiences are intertwined with her hidden family’s memories, leading her to understand the connection between visible and invisible history.

If history is a body, then the erased memory is like a severed limb. And the phantom pain left by this absence often needs another reflection, one that can be mourned, to soothe it.