Soomin Shon’s work navigates the fragile negotiations of belonging, displacement, and identity within mediated realities. Moving between the personal and the political, the scripted and the unscripted, she explores how memory, language, and technology shape both connection and isolation.
Her videos and live interventions emerge from lived moments—fleeting conversations, personal histories, and cultural residues—woven into fragmented narratives. Found footage, journalistic reports, viral media, and personal recordings intersect with fiction, allegory, and fable, bringing seemingly disparate elements into dialogue. Through disorientation and reconfiguration, she exposes the systems we take for granted—the networks through which we construct meaning, the hierarchies we inherit, and the limits of representation.
With wry humor and poetic dissonance, her work unsettles, inviting audiences to navigate the tensions between structure and slippage. Her practice is a way of renegotiating presence—continuously adapting to shifting cultural, technological, and socioeconomic landscapes.
October 2025 – joining the Dwell Here Research Intensive Week from 15 – 21 October 2025
Research Focus
Shon’s current research looks at how the female body negotiates cultural identity in migratory contexts, especially when shaped by postcolonial histories? How do postcolonial legacies influence the experiences of women in the diaspora, particularly in terms of body politics and femininity? How do gender and migration intersect, and how can these themes be explored through embodied practices such as performance and installation?
Dwell Here offers participants a simple proposition: to commit to this time and place while thinking deeply about its urgencies. Together we are curious to learn what can be activated or challenged through the process of dwelling. IMMA encourages reflection across the following themes to consider geographical, historical, political and cultural concepts of Ireland as a starting point to expand and connect international contexts through similarities and differences:
Technologies of Peace – to consider commemorative landscapes and memories of peace (as a dream, movement, or value) while generating perspectives on sustainable coexistence.
The Irish Paradigm – Welcomes artistic research that creates intimacy and connections, while celebrating the perceived agility and freedoms of operating on the periphery. As a small island on the edge of Europe, Ireland often has a challenging relationship with ‘the centre’.
The Museum as a Site of Vibration – consider how the museum and site can create new vibrations and rhythms within the built legacy of empire. How can museums make visible cultural shifts, including erased, censored or marginalised histories, as well as sustainability, planetary care, sharing and hospitality.