Ginny Huo is an interdisciplinary artist that creates social sculptures and performative installations. She was born in Honolulu, Hawaii and lived in various places in the United States and Korea. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a concentration in sculpture from Brigham Young University. Ginny received her Master of Fine Arts at the Rinehart School of Sculpture at the Maryland Institute College of the Arts in Baltimore, MD. Her work discusses ideas of cross-culturalism, fear, anxiety, myths, duality of belief and disbelief, and interactions based on meta-communication. The work involves creating structures that act as playful platforms of interaction between participants.
Participants were invited to play the telephone game. Instructions were to have one person pick up a card and whisper the phrase down the lane. The phrases on the cards contained a short sentence of cautionary cultural myths that I gathered from various people who at one time believed the stories to be true.
In the piece people can sit and listen to the stories of various people’s myths through air vents. These stories are collected from numerous people with diverse backgrounds and cultures. They include personal facts of how the storyteller heard these myths and how it created a change in their behavior. The step structure replicates the porch-style culture where people are able sit, listen, and share stories. This sculpture creates a space where people can sit and comprehend cultural myths in a more interpersonal way to further the mimetic replication of passing on stories through communication.
The bicycles were available to use 24 hours during the exhibition. I rode the bike for 2 hours each day. Passersby were encouraged to come along for a ride.
I sat inside a transportable box where I carried conversations with people that were willing to sit. We engaged in open conversation as we were both free from the knowledge of either party’s identity and could not view each other’s non-verbal body language. Non-verbal language is generally the initial form of communication; however, this piece encourages participants to connect solely through verbal language.
From 2003-2005, twenty deaths were reported to the Consumer Injury Surveillance System in Korea involving asphyxiation caused by leaving electric fans on while sleeping in an enclosed space. This image depicts one of the twenty various ways a person could be killed by a fan.
This installation is an imitation of the preservation used for the dining room table in the house where I was raised. It demonstrates the paradox in which people buy things that are meant for daily use, but go through great length to protect them.