Korean-born artist Go-Eun Im’s practice is characterised by an on-going and continuous effort to reflect on notions of dialectical relationships, as exemplified by the Self and the Other. She creates predominantly experimental film, video installations and interactive media that consider the shifting borders between subject and object of gaze, the past and the present, the fictional and the real. Go-Eun Im’s experimental film Take a Picture (2004) was exhibited at Hanmi Gallery London as part of the group exhibition ‘PERSONA’ which investigated notions of self, other and identity. The revisited version of this film tackled issues around notions of representation and perception of images. Drawing from the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, the artist makes reference to the Mirror Stage theory when an infant first acknowledges its unified image in front of a mirror. For Lacan, the split between subject-obejcet is of central importance for the future development of the self and Go-Eun’s renacts such milestone experience to investigate herself and others. By taking a picture of herself she feels compelled to ask if what is represented in that image is her subject-I or her ego. She explores the way images are processed and how perception is subject to filtering and distortion. In a wider scope, Go-Eun is also interested in the blurred boundaries between self/other and the reciprocal relations that exist between these two notions. She is aware of this and recognises a trans-personal dimension in her practice. Go-Eun herself argues ‘I who was taking the picture was engraved in the eyes of the other – the twinkling of my embarrassment which was hers’.

Go-Eun Im currently lives and works in Amsterdam and has exhibited her work internationally, such as at Seoul Experimental Film festival (2004), Festival De Cine Coreano, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Santiago (2007), and had a residency at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten/Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science.