Hyungi Park is a Korean American artist based in Los Angeles, CA. Park obtained her BFA in Sculpture + Extended Media at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA. Hyungi’s works channel the essence of traditional practices and rituals into hybridized ceremonies with modern technology. Her practice involves incense, historically used to measure time, as markers to reimagine new time structures utilizing scent. Her recent installation and digital works evolve from performances, attempting to replicate the visceral and ephemeral, and immortalizing it. She teaches lectures on the history of incense along with incense making workshops, and directs Baboshop, a creative multi-use studio in Los Angeles, CA. Hyungi’s work with incense has been featured in the New York Times and Architectural Digest, and has worked with MOCA, The Hammer Museum, Urban Outfitters, Nike, and Spotify.

Rapid Response Project

In 1998, the Korean company LG created a 10-year-old non-binary cyber shaman named “Cysha.” Cysha was aimed to protect computers from viruses and pornography. During Phase 1, Hyungi conjured Cysha into an interactive portal on the internet, accessible to anyone. This portal is envisioned as a sacred space that is constantly refreshed, a loop, and an inherent ritual.

It includes different apps, generators, videos, images, and texts mirroring aspects of the artist’s work and Korea’s politics with shamanism, but within a digital sphere, immortalized. The portal uses the digital sphere to create discourse on the oppression of primitive religions through colonialism and the results of adapting to modernization via westernization.