Jazoo Yang

Redevelopment Redefined

Jazoo Yang is probably best known for the Dots series, where she covers a home set for demolition with her thumbprint. In her homeland of Korea, the thumbprint—or “Jijang”—has a legal and personally binding power similar to a signature. With just a thumbprint, whole communities are turned over to destruction and gentrification.

Upon moving to Berlin, Yang expanded her Dots series to incorporate the issue of refugees and migrants in Europe and beyond to explore the evolution of cities. Working with local immigrants, Yang discusses their stories, histories and day-to-day existence as they mark the wall together in a kind of folk song. In other series, she scrapes, gathers and re-assembles remnants of flaking paint, old wallpaper, rusted metal and the flotsam and jetsam of demolished and vacated sites, reconstituting them in the studio in acts of remembrance; time and memory sealed in resin.

We spent time together discussing art, politics, memory, loss and her place as one of the few female “urban interventionists” currently practicing on the streets of Europe.

Martyn Reed: Originally from South Korea and now working out of Berlin, what have you brought from that background to your current projects on the streets of Europe?

Jazoo Yang: I was a designer and founding member of Korea's first web magazine Akzine, which covers the Korean independent scene and underground. After that, I spent time making documentary films.