INSTITUTO TECNOLÓGICO Y DE ESTUDIOS

SUPERIORES DE MONTERREY

Islets of Asperger Type V (2009), Sculpture,

oil on resin, South Korea

XOOANG CHOI: ISLETS OF ASPERGERS

EDUARDO ALBERTO REYES GARCÍA - A01273654

EMILIANO HERNÁNDEZ TORRES - A01339081

GERARDO SÁNCHEZ RODRÍGUEZ - A01025580

IRIDIANA ARCOS DÍAZ - A01025207

JUAN PABLO GUTIÉRREZ GARCÍA - A01635247

ROQUE ALEJANDRO ARANDA ANGUIANO - A01025904

CONTEMPORARY ART AND CULTURE

MAY, 2020
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Among all the South Korean contemporary artists, Xooang Choi is definitely one of the
most critical and furthermost interesting as he makes very powerful and controversial
stances which reflect upon how almost every sociopolitical systems tend to sale the idea
of the whole rather than individualisms, feeding up from it and eventually turning into
fascist regimes (Ryu, 2014). Choi is a very cultivated and educated man; he is an
intellectual. He is familiar with contemporary philosophers Felix Guattari and Michel
Foucault, who addressed “the relationship between power and knowledge, and how they
are used as a form of social control through societal institutions” (Burrell as cited in
Wikipedia, “Michel Foucault,” 2020).

Xooang Choi was born in Seoul, South Korea in 1975. He obtained an MFA in Sculpture
from the Seoul National University in 2005. He is known for taking body parts out of
context, unearthing dark emotions and creating disturbing and thought-provoking pieces
that explore human rights, discrimination, society’s pathological state, isolation,
loneliness, and sex and gender politics, among other themes (Lark, 2017).

Choi seeks to represent his view on modern life and on how it presents problems born
from social structures (Chung, 2010), consisting of social anxiety, fragility, the loss of
individualism and the ego, and the lack of communication and freedom derived by
Guattari’s microfascism (Ryu, 2014). In his series Islets of Aspergers, Choi achieves this
through the distortion and exaggeration of the human body in his sculptures ,
transmitting the disturbance and annoyance he feels in order to present a clever
argument on how we metaphorically play a similar role in society as Aspergers, isolated,
misunderstood and, in some cases, excluded under horrible labels for the benefit of
aristocrats and oligarchs.

In Islets of Aspergers, Choi masterfully expresses this ideas by crafting a society of

sculptures in which each addresses qualities of Asperger’s syndrome, which is
characterized by "individuals who have difficulty integrating into mainstream society and
lack basic social communication despite normal linguistic and cognitive
development” (Ryu, 2014). Choi brilliantly “shows the characteristics of Asperger’s
Syndrome by exaggerating and distorting a body part” (Chung, 2010), which at the same
time stresses their obsessions —as their focus would be led towards an specific part of
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the body rather than having equal proportions. He also plays with color, as he uses it to
highlight the body parts being distorted and emphasizing how symbolically each of the
Asperger’s virtuously develop abilities related with them.

Through this distortion and exaggeration, Choi also achieves making the spectators
experience a feeling of disturbance (Lark, 2017), which perhaps could make them feel
empathy for the figures and actually understanding a little more of how Asperger’s feel.
This could also foreshadow a very rich and powerful statement on how there is always a
very natural, primitive, and inherent form of communication we all experience through
empathy and the understanding of body language (which ironically is that which
Asperger’s find difficulties with). Nevertheless, it also alludes to how Choi feels regarding
the loss of individuality before collective values.

Since his past works, Xooang Choi presents very powerful arguments on how societies
are comprised of collective masses and yet ignore the individual elements inherent to
the people, almost always in the benefit of the rulers. Suddenly, the society blindly
follows the values of their rulers or leaders (Ryu, 2014).

In 2009, Choi presented The Hero and The Wings, which address how historically during
the 1960s and 1970s Korea was governed by a military regime which emphasized “the
value of the collective over the worth of a single individual under the guise of growing
the industry and economy” (Ryu, 2014). The people blindly followed their leaders and
acknowledged themselves as the heroes responsible of the country’s progress. Choi
then raises the question of whether this generation “was in fact heroic or if they had
been manipulated by the ruling party” (Ryu, 2014).

As Guattari suggests, this is not exclusive of fascist and communist regimes, coining his
term microfascism, in which in capitalist systems, the figures of authority try to control
the population by making their values internalized by the masses (Ryu, 2014).

Following the insight of French postmodernists like Guattari and Michel

Foucault, Choi developed his own insight into how collectives disregard

certain characteristics of an individual in an attempt to integrate them in

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a single unified stream. In this context of fascism, whatever does not fit

in the mainstream is deemed abnormal. (Ryu, 2014)

And overall, Choi’s assertiveness is to be highlighted, as he opts for Asperger’s rather

than autism as its difference serves a higher purpose in order to make a successfully
critical analogy on the problem of communication, where perhaps lies his strongest
proposal and critique.

Choi stresses the problem of communication, in which Asperger’s actually don’t present
difficulties with language —whereas autists do—, but with physical and facial gestures
instead, which at the end functions as a metaphor on how we are unable to really
communicate our own individual ideas and how societies are not comprised of individual
elements who progress through the synthesis of their values and ideas but yet of islets
of people who can’t reach to one another (Chung, 2010).

This defines a key concept as it also addresses how the sculptures are unable to
establish a relation or some sort of communication with the viewers —some of the
sculptures don’t even present limbs, directly referencing this—, which at the same time
references how individuals experience several difficulties in communicating their ideas.
There are no societies comprised of individuals, but only by masses which have adopted
the ideas and values of their whatever called ruler.

Choi also states how Asperger’s tend to loose the bigger picture or to isolate themselves
through the portrayal of Aspergers acting indifferent to everything else besides
themselves, as if the spectator didn’t exist (Chung, 2010). It works as an unearthing
metaphor on how societies’ biggest thinkers who behave outside the norm are naturally
excluded and isolated by the society, which is controlled from the shadows by the
authorities and manipulating its beliefs, especially with those who go against the
established systems and status quo. This ends up eventually encapsulating and driving
them into madness.

Choi “urges us to see how we are suffocating in this tightly woven society, failing to
communicate with anybody, thus isolating ourselves” (Chung, 2010). It is Plato’s allegory
of the cave, in which the Philosopher discovers a world full of truth painted with the
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colors of reality, but finds himself incapable of luring his fellow companions to the outside
(Plato, trans. 1968). In fact, this is the biggest challenge philosophers and artists face.

In Mexico, Choi’s posture can be remarkably related to corruption and the way it has
penetrated society since the Revolutionary war. This is perfectly visible on Luis Estrada’s
satirical political films La dictadura perfecta and La Ley de Herodes, in which the
protagonists see themselves immersed in the Mexican political system ruled by
corruption and deception. In La Ley De Herodes (Estrada, 1999), Damián Alcázar’s
character Juan Vargas begins by doing things right upon being appointed temporary
major of a small village by the state governor. But as the film progresses, the greed, the
lack of funds, and the Mexican political environment start corrupting him until he
becomes that which he swore to destroy, entering the elite society of the Mexican ruling
party (and yet becoming and isolated islet in the small village).

On the other hand, in La dictadura perfecta, Estrada (2014) portrays the Mexican
sociopolitical system of the 2010s referencing the 2012 Presidential elections and
depicting them as full of corruption and bribery. Choi’s islets are specifically aplicable to
Joaquín Cosío’s character the Opposition leader, Congressman Agustín Morales, who
by running the opposition is targeted as an enemy by the ruling party.

As he grows in popularity and gets in possession of threatening information to the

governor Carmelo Vargas’s candidacy, the multimedia mass company, TV MX, lure
congressman Morales into a trap, making him lose his credibility and isolating him from
his followers. He is then murdered in his hotel room, and left with a gun in his hand
deceiving audiences to think he had committed suicide. Here, the relationship with
Choi’s proposal is surprisingly functional: just picture Choi’s Islets of Aspergers Type X in
the middle of the murder scene, as a substitute of Cosío’s character.

This analogies and associations make us reflect on how we as humans share intrinsic
values and problems just for the sake of being humans. The way societies work and the
way we relate is very similar even in different cultures, and therefore presenting similar
problems, as Choi’s identified barriers in communication.

Xooang Choi’s disruptive ideas and surgical critiques can be accurately related to art
proposals from other cultures, stating the immanent transcendence of a multicultural
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phenomenon in which his critique can be applied to the different sociopolitical systems in
the world. Through his work, Choi isn’t only criticizing the South Korean society, but the
human race as a whole.
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References
• Chung, J. (2010). Isolated Islets. Retrieved from http://www.akive.org/eng/portfolio/
review/E0000050/ISLETS%20OF%20ASPERGERS

• Estrada, L. (Producer & Director). (1999). La Ley De Herodes [Motion picture]. México:
Artecinema & Venevision International.

• Estrada, L. (Producer & Director). (2014). La dictadura perfecta [Motion picture].

México: Bandidos Films & Alfhaville Cinema.

• Kurtz, G. (Producer), & Kershner, I. (Director). (1980). The Empire Strikes Back
[Motion picture]. United States: 20th Century Fox.

• Lark, J. (2017). Xooang Choi. Biography. Retrieved from https://www.widewalls.ch/

artist/xooang-choi/

• Ryu, Han-seung. (2014). Choi Xooang. The Blind for the Blind. Retrieved from https://
slash-paris.com/en/evenements/choi-xooang-the-blind-for-the-blind

• Wikipedia. (2020). Michel Foucault. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

Michel_Foucault

All images retrieved from http://www.akive.org/newGallery/web.html?e_uid=E0000050 


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The feeling of disturbance regarding its historic and cultural context is similar to that U.S.
filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Oliver Stone realistically portray in their respective films
Taxi Driver (Phillips & Scorsese, 1976) and Born on the Fourth of July (Kitman Ho &
Stone, 1989), in which the main characters are Vietnam veterans who have just returned
from war, and when expecting glory and honor, they find themselves disappointed to
know people’s ideology has changed.

They have been fooled and deceived into that unified stream of Nationalist and Patriotic
ideals, which at the same time served as the alter ego of greed and corruption,
benefitting politicians and the higher classes. Upon acknowledging this new reality, both
protagonists face very challenging emotional problems that almost lead them to
committing suicide, as they could not bear with the truth. The whole has fallen, and
individuals are worth nothing (Phillips & Scorsese, 1976) (Kitman Ho & Stone, 1989).

• Kitman Ho, A. & Stone, O. (Producers), & Stone, O. (Director). (1989). Born on the
Fourth of July. United States: Universal Pictures.

• Phillips, J. & Phillips, M. (Producers), & Scorsese, M. (Director). (1976). Taxi Driver
[Motion picture]. United States: Columbia Pictures.

I. Select an artist and an artwork that reflect the society in which it was created and
comes from a different cultural background than yours. The artist’s artwork also has
to show a position versus any social conflict that affects his/her environment or has
happened to him/her as a personal experience. The goal is to find an example that will
help you learn how to understand the horizon that the work of art and its creator belong
to, after you put into practice the tools for interpretation and find comparable parameters
or situations that you could relate to in your own horizon.

The position of the artist could be related to any of the following situations: ecological
problems, domestic violence, war or genocide, discrimination of any kind (racial, gender
or sexual orientation, cultural, ideological, etc.). - Discrimination against Asperger’s

Objective: Through the understanding and appreciation of a multicultural expression,

the selected contemporary artist and one of his/her works of art, the students will
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compare their values to their own and explain how the proposals can be similar to
situations that occur in their own horizon.

INSTRUCTIONS:

Use the selected artist and work piece that you have researched for the Preliminary
Research. Include an image (or several as needed) and the technical data.

Identify the artist’s proposal, expressed in the work that you selected and explained in
the thesis. Write an essay that explains how you can find equivalent values of the
artist’s proposal after analyzing the selected work, using the previously revised outline
and considering the following:

• The ideas or the objective expressed in his/her work 


• How the use of techniques, materials, language and symbols help express his/her 

ideas and represent their horizon 


• How the context or horizon of the work compares to your own and how you can
find 

comparable values or situations 


Please highlight the sentence of the thesis statement and the THREE sentences of the
arguments with bold or italic, underlined or highlighted text, so it can be easily identified
(just the sentences, not the whole paragraph).

Fuse the Horizons: the arguments should lead the essay to a clear comparison of
values to perform a fusion of horizons as a conclusion of the essay. You should not
introduce new information here but connect the thesis and arguments to demonstrate
how you understood the artist’s expression and how you can value it because of the
shared truths it conveys.

Recommendation: go straight to the point yet be clear and thorough in explaining the
arguments, thus concentrate in the important information. Eliminate filler or unnecessary
text and do not digress.
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GUIDE QUESTIONS:

1. Identify the assertion or action - What is the statement, proposal or message that
the artist wished to express through the artwork? CLEAR

2. How is this assertion or action expressed, represented, symbolized or codified in

the artwork? Is it clearly read by the spectator or is there a need of context or
information on the message? CLEAR

3. What information can be inferred from the artwork from the society in which it was
produced? How is it a reflection of its time (its ideological, cultural, political,
sociological, technological context)? CLEAR

4. What other explanations or conclusions are possible? Are there any elements that
cannot be explained or interpreted (that could’ve been lost in time)? CLEAR

5. How are the ideas expressed in the work of art different from yours? Be thorough
in explaining what you learned and did not share with the artist and the work of art
to highlight the fusion of horizons.

To give a clear direction to the essay reflect on: ¿What is the relevance of the artist’s
expression to its own culture and how is it meaningful to ours?


AKIVE

(Chung, 2010)

SLASH

(Ryu, 2014)

WIDEWALLS

(Lark, 2017)

EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

(Kurtz & Kershner, 1980)

LA LEY DE HERODES
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LA DICTADURA PERFECTA