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JinYoung Yu works present a growing population of translucent men, women, and children: at once present and absent, exposed and shielded, fragile and quietly defiant. Crafted from the perfectly transparent PVC she formulated herself; these full-scale figures articulate the dissonance between how we appear and how we feel — a psychological tension that defines life in the modern world.

The Birth of the Invisible People

Born in Korea in 1977 and trained at Sungshin Women’s University (B.F.A. 2001, M.F.A. 2005), Yu developed her art only after extensive trial and error. Glass distorted the world behind it. Clear plastic lacked purity. She needed a surface capable of absolute neutrality — a shell that, like a false smile, reveals nothing.

The concept emerged when a mysterious visitor claimed to know her intimately despite being a stranger.

He was a transparent or non-existent being. The invisible person is myself.

– She recalls.

This paradox became the basis for her first solo show Abundant Emptiness (2006), where viewers navigated a gallery populated by life-sized figures hiding behind columns, blending into corners, and appearing suddenly in peripheral vision.

Yu had found her world: a community of invisible people whose emotional shields are as clear as glass and as impenetrable as silence.

Crafting Transparency: A Painstaking Anatomy of Loneliness

Each figure demands about forty days of labor. Yu begins with a narrative — a situation, a personality, a conflict. Only then does she sculpt a clay body, fabricate masks, socks, hands, and accessories, and form plaster molds around each part. Heated PVC sheets are pressed and shaped until they conform without a single wrinkle. She assembles the forms with transparent thread, stitching the body like an intimate wound.

The result is astonishing: transparent shells so accurate they capture every subtle contour of the human form, yet so empty they vibrate with absence.

Faces That Refuse to Speak — and Reveal Everything

Yu’s figures rarely cry, but their restraint is heartbreaking. Lips tighten into thin, defensive lines. Eyes stare forward, resisting connection. Facial muscles freeze mid-emotion, the way people do when they are “holding their tears back and swallowing them,” as Yu describes.

Occasionally a sculpture displays the hint of weeping — a rare but devastating rupture in the emotional armor. The rest maintain their cool façades, their masks of politeness, their practiced indifference. Their clothing — patterned boots, masks, hair clips, puppets — becomes camouflage. Without such props, these people would disappear entirely.

One especially striking sculpture depicts a small child in rain boots beside a white dog with its own mask tied neatly under the chin. Both stand perfectly still, their transparency absorbing the painted environment behind them. Their innocence only amplifies the ache of their emotional distance.

When a Family Becomes a Mirror: “A Family in Disguise”

Yu’s practice reached new clarity in A Family in Disguise (Union Gallery, London, 2008). A group of transparent figures greets unseen guests with exaggerated politeness: the perfect domestic tableau, staged for social approval. Gorgeous clothing, careful décor, forced smiles — all masking the profound disconnection beneath.

The family unit becomes a metaphor for society: a space where rituals of affection coexist with the fear of being truly known.

Everything lacks sincerity. All the conversations and greetings place everybody in trouble.

– Yu writes.

The sculptures stand together yet remain unreachable, each encased within their private glasslike armor.

The Paradox of Invisibility

Yu understands invisibility as both shield and trap.
A transparent body offers protection — a way to vanish, to avoid intrusion. Yet it also isolates. It denies companionship, empathy, and shared experience.

Stay away. See me, if you can truly understand.

– Her crying faces tell us.

This contradiction makes Yu’s figures uncannily familiar. They resemble the versions of ourselves that recoil from intimacy while longing for connection — the selves that grow quiet when overwhelmed, the selves that hide their pain behind casual smiles.

Toward a More Honest Self

Yu believes individuality does not require spectacle.

I like being ordinary. If a person thinks and behaves in their own way, life becomes more diverse and enjoyable.

– She says.

Her sculptures echo that philosophy. They stand in the gallery as tender warnings, reminders of the cost of emotional concealment and the possibility of sincerity. Beneath their transparent shells lies a universal desire: to be seen without being exposed, to be known without being judged, to be loved without performance.

Her work is for the loner inside each viewer — the self that longs for a world where honesty feels safe.