Heji Shin: Technically Naked

Portrait by Richard Kern

Makenna Karas: I've noticed you've done a lot of work with both animals and raw depictions of the human experience, thinking specifically about your “Big Cocks” exhibition as well as the “Baby” series. What is it about capturing those moments that captivate you? The primality of them?

Heji Shin: Well, I think that regarding the photos, it's, as you said, the primal moment. It's about the work, of course, nature, right? Or the perception of what nature is, or what our contemporary perception of it is. And then, of course, to bring it into the realms of art, I mean, I think it's a very traditional practice. Yeah. I believe that traditional art practices are about that.

Makenna: You said that the exhibit title was inspired by Helmut Newton's "Big Nudes series," which obviously depicts a wide array of naked women. How do you see the pigs functioning in relation to, or perhaps against, those original female nude portraits?

Heji: So I think that the reference to Helmut Newton came after I had photographed the pigs and scanned the brain. So primarily, I like the title about what the photographs were turning into because it just worked in a sense that, technically, it showed the show contains nude subjects presented in a huge way. But all the different layers of a big nude are also some art historical genre. So, in this case, I would propose an expanded definition. Also, maybe it's not a super serious one. And then in terms of the idea of like “people might think if I even should articulate it at all because it doesn't really make sense to add” but this was the main idea. And then, of course, you think it's enormous, nude women in Hamlet Newton's context. And whatever you think concerning that, to my work, it's up to you, I guess. It's up to the viewer.

Heji Shin, You’ve come a long way, baby!, 2023; © Heji Shin. Courtesy the artist and 52 Walker, New York

Makenna: So, kind of going off of that, I'm interested in the titles as well. You have “The Big Nudes” and you have “Big Cocks”, and then obviously, with each one, the work that you produced completely subverted what the audience would expect from a title like that. The viewer is coming in expecting one thing, and then they see these beautiful portraits of pink pigs. What do you hope that experience will be like? Did you at all intend for those pigs to surprise the viewer and give them something that they weren't expecting?

Heji: Yeah. I think with that, I didn't think so much. Of course, when you have an idea, and you think this idea through, especially with titles, because with titles, you have another way of giving the work some sort of meaning or kind of a different perspective towards it. So, of course, titles are exciting. But then at the end of the day, how you contextualize it is always interesting. But in this case, I think you would expect something completely different. And yeah, I think surprises are always good in terms of art. But I didn't think, like, "Oh, my God. That's what people are going to expect, but I deliver something else. Oh, that's a surprise." I don't think this way. I just knew people would expect something different. And the surprise of that is what makes it such good art. Maybe it's not a surprise, but yeah, like fulfilling other people's expectations. There's a pleasure sometimes in doing things not the right way, like maybe wrong. And it's a big pleasure when you do art.

Makenna: I think that it's very easy to start looking into the pigs symbolically, but you've said that you're not interested in that as much as how they are as purely visual subjects. Can you speak a little bit about what the visual of the pig was about? Or how they worked as models?

Heji: As models, you read all these interpretations of what the viewer sees or wants to see with this show, and I'd leave it up to them because there are so many layers you can read it with. So, I don't want to control the narrative too much. I think, in this case, you can do a lot out of this already.

Heji Shin, Reclining Nude, 2023 © Heji Shin. Courtesy the artist and 52 Walker, New York

Makenna: I also understand that the pigs were from a slaughterhouse in upstate New York. How did that influence or change the process of photographing them? Do you have a stance on animal rights that is perhaps interwoven into it at all?

Heji: No. No. No. No. I love animals. I bought a farm upstate, and maybe I was also thinking a little bit about the animal farm in general. Of course, in my work there are a lot of animals to this point, I think. But animal rights, no. Activism is not my strong side, not in art.

Makenna: What about the process of obtaining those pigs at the slaughterhouse? What was that like?

Heji: No. They didn't come from the slaughterhouse. They came from just a meat pig farm. So yeah. So mostly the pigs that are on a farm are meat pigs, and they reach a certain age, and then they're sent to the slaughterhouse. But no, I didn't plan it out. I didn't want them from a slaughter farm. It could have been more conceptual. There needed to be a conceptual intent behind it.

Makenna: I would love to know more about the brain scans included alongside the pig portraits. What was the first spark or source of inspiration that pushed you into wanting to use your brain or to get a brain scan done at all for this series?

I DON'T WANT TO CONTROL THE NARRATIVE TOO MUCH

Heji: So the first idea I mean, we had different ideas for the show at 52 Walker. I had different personalities in my mind for whose brains I wanted to scan. They’re, like, in a sense, a portrait of this person, like a very abstract portrait of a person, which is, of course, also an illusion. But finally, we decided to do a brain scan of my brain. Before, I thought about it in terms of creating brain scans of different people, in terms of a portrayal you know as a representation of a portrait of a specific person. And back then, I was talking with Ebony about scanning Kanye West's brain, but also other people's brains. I think we were thinking of Mike Tyson and Elon Musk. But it turned out to be a little bit more difficult. And we were kind of on a very tight schedule. So, I decided to scan my brain. And with that, because with the other personality strain, it would have been an obvious message or like an obvious portrait of, I don't know, a very oversized masculine person. And with scanning my brain, it looked a little bit different. And I didn't want to have this approach. I didn't want to have a very serious approach to the artist's portrait in a museum space or art space.

Makenna: I suppose that I am primarily interested in the process. You went in and got these brain scans done. What made you want to share them, especially in connection to the pig portraits, as you have said that you see the two performing with, not apart, from one another?

Heji: So I wanted my first plan to have brain scans of Kanye West that I was in contact with and I've worked with. And he didn't come through with this project, although he really liked it. And I was thinking about the different kinds of people that I mentioned, like Mike Tyson and Elon Musk, and how these are various specific personalities. And what I ended up with when I finally decided to scan my brain was that the whole context of this oversized masculine person shifted, of course, because it was my brain. But still, it is still the artist's brain in this kind of space, in a museum space.

Heji Shin, Matt and Chris, 2023 © Heji Shin. Courtesy the artist and 52 Walker, New York

Heji Shin, Derek, 2023 © Heji Shin. Courtesy the artist and 52 Walker, New York

Makenna: I find that beautiful. Your brain is both literally and metaphorically on display within your exhibit.

Heji: Yeah. But, of course, it doesn't display anything. For artwork, I don't like it that much because it's a very technical, a very digital representation of something. And normally, it's tough to make it look good or attractive to my taste—some people like this very cool stuff and a very sterile way of showing an idea. But normally, I don't like it. So I think what was also interesting about this immaculate technical and sterile digital representation of the brain was the juxtaposition with pigs, which you associate more with the physical and with the dirt. But of course, the pigs are also very clean-cut, very proper, and pink. But just the idea of you knowing that you have something very ethereal…or not ethereal, but more like immaterial, in contrast to the idea of pigs.

Makenna: Did you have any significant challenges when putting together this series?

Heji: Yeah. I mean, there are always, always, challenges. But in that case, I think I had not too many challenges like more on a very normal, regular. Challenges always pop up when you do a show, but they aren't very extraordinary. But definitely, a challenge was that I had to deal with something that was very technical.

Makenna: With the brain scans?

Heji: Yeah. And to work with that because many artists do that kind of work, you know like a very immaterial or digital work. Great guidance would be like a person who is very good in this immaterial way of working with something. But personally, even if I do photography, I don't like it that much. I have to either have a real emotional experience through the experience of photographing or going through something. And then that would manifest in the work, or you'd have even to do something with your hands, right, like physically, and a lot of artists don't do that. Only a very few achieve doing something in this realm and make it good or not approachable, but even that does something to you. It's very hard. So the brain scan was a bit challenging in that sense, more like mentally.

Makenna: You felt slightly distanced from it because it was highly technical. They weren’t as personal as some other projects that you have done.

Heji: Yeah. And I think you even see it. You know it was also the first time I hadn't been involved in production. You're always interested in the production. But at the end of the day, you can only do a little because computers and machines or technicians do these technical processes. So your influence is limited or challenged in different ways.

Heji Shin, Big Nude II, 2023 © Heji Shin. Courtesy the artist and 52 Walker, New York

Makenna: So speaking to that, it sounds like you tried something rather new by doing something so technical. Has your artistic process or your source of inspiration changed over the course of your career? In what ways?

Heji: Yeah. I think always. It's constantly changing. But I also believe that fundamentally, like the fundamental principles, they mostly stay the same. But in this kind of realm, themes change over time. And technology is changing. All these things are changing. But of course, fundamentally, there's a universal thing about it that never changes.

Makenna: Overall, what do you hope that people would take away from viewing and experiencing this series?

Heji: I think that controlling the narrative is, for an artist, a very futile attempt because its perception doesn't lie within use because you release it so to say. And then everybody can do whatever they want with it. So generally, there's no expectation, just acceptance. Acceptance. To each their own. Total acceptance.