I Love You

I Love You, 2019, four channel video on IKEA TV stand, 3:05min

I Love You consists of a female finger erotically rubbing and stroking the floor, food, dirty dishes, and clothes. The labor of home appliances - which a robot vacuum, a washing machine, a dishwasher, and a rice cooker enact - is converted to a gesture of eroticism, intimacy, and obsession. A juvenile female voice perpetually utters “I Love You”, an intimate phrase that gradually turns into an impotent and mechanical repetition.
When the artist visited her home in Seoul, smart home appliances were a surging technology. These domestic appliances are identified as women or a child and programmed with female voices, which triggered the artist to think about the complicated relationship between female users and female-identified machines. Walking a tightrope between subject and object, autonomy and dependency, unwanted and desire, intimacy and alienation, passive and aggressive, and human and machine, I Love You explores the pluralistic psychology between human, female, technology, and domestic labor.

This video was initially made in 2019 and re-edited in 2023.

Exhibition history: Matsutake Gallery Paris; 2023, SEOUL ART SPACE SEOGYO; 2021, Monte Vista Project LA; 2019, New Wight Galley LA; 2019.