Vacuum cleaners, personal massagers, electronic baby rockers, walking pads: these are the second-hand machines Rachel Yoon sources to create her kinetic sculptures. They are made from artificial flowers, metal fittings, and used electronic parts, and each piece has a human presence.
slow burn is made of an artificial orchid, a neck massager, a piece of metal that clamps the orchid petals, and a monitor mount that attaches the entire device to the gallery wall. The massager’s motor moves a metal rod that forces the orchid flower to open and close, and the visuals feel trapped in sexuality, forcing the flower to endlessly curl and unfold toward the viewer. Its repetitive movements suggest a person trapped in a comfortable loop, spinning endlessly in a cycle of self-destruction. Yoon even goes so far as to say that their sculptures have their own life cycles, with motors burning out and mechanical hardware breaking in the gallery.
Often sourcing parts from a variety of used appliances found on Facebook Marketplace, this artwork elicits feelings of love, sadness, and eroticism in the viewer. The works raise questions about domestic and sexual labor, human comfort, and the relationships we form with the machines we use in our daily lives. We interviewed Mr. Yong and asked them to tell us more about their anthropomorphic work.
How did you know you wanted to be an artist?
I grew up in a Baptist Christian Korean immigrant family, which had its own complexities. I think the typical immigrant story is that your parents want you to be a doctor or a lawyer or something. My father wanted me to join the Air Force. That should never have happened. But they never really deterred me from doing art.
Then they weren’t going to protest because I had a scholarship from the school. Themes of things I experienced as a child crept into the work in ways I didn’t really expect. I think a lot about my own performance, especially as a woman in the church.
Being a pastor’s daughter, seeing my mother as a pastor’s wife, and how I have to express myself were in the background for me. A fun childhood. I grew up with a lot of shame and Christian guilt. My family told me it was okay to do art as long as I spread the word of God through my work. And I thought, “Yes, I will definitely do that.”
I’m a closet atheist, to say the least. There are definitely parts of my life that my family doesn’t know about. That’s how it should be.
Many people want to be spiritual or believe in something. I totally agree with that and feel the same way, but not through organized religion. I’m fighting it. My hope for the future is that people will move.[ing] Away from ideology and dogmatic spirituality. I think we’ll see if it stays this way. But I feel like that’s what people want.
Through your practice, could you explain how your work evolved into what it is today?
I started doing illustrations and fell in love with animation. Was I cut out for it? Probably not. So I decided to study sculpture as an undergraduate.
I really had no prior experience in sculpting. I had never worked with three-dimensional objects before, so working at a store was scary. I was interested in animation and the expressiveness and discernment of manga. It has something to do with the work I have now. This is because, even though it is a sculpture and does not have a face, this work has anthropomorphic characteristics. When people see these sculptures moving in strange ways, they feel that there is something they can empathize with, such as being funny or pitiful. That’s the great thing about animation, which you can’t do with live-action. Like when Disney started making everything live-action.
When something is hyper-specific and not hyper-realistic, more people will have access to the access point. This was my way of expressing the themes I was interested in without always making it about myself. My sculptures express emotions such as frustration, but now they are becoming more erotic.
And it’s fun because there are always surprises that come out of the work through unpredictable processes. Back to your question, I started experimenting with the dynamics with these massagers. Because the massager is slow and I didn’t have the ability, this is a way to research how the massager works without having to build everything from scratch.
Then I started putting fake plants on top of them. Both the machine and the fake plant came with so many compelling stories that they came into their own. Particularly in the last few years, I’ve pushed my anthropomorphism even further. Nowadays, some people have shoes and limbs without facial features. There’s still something metaphorical about them, almost little miniature characters.
It’s like that meme. “Evolution, can you give us a pattern-seeking brain to avoid predators?”
Interestingly, there are studies done on that among more religious people. Look for signs of Jesus in things like toasts and trees. There’s something so cool and weird about the ability to identify with something that’s clearly not human or even animal. It says a lot about people who project onto it that they can put something, a real emotion, into something that can’t receive it.
This is a very interesting conversation as we are now obsessed with AI chatbots.
The AI learns to respond to the target. I find this both reassuring and very strange. This is because the reality of having a close relationship with another person is that you cannot control everything about them or predict their emotions.
It’s easy to make it a disaster.
But hyper-post-whatever capitalism makes us really lonely. Automated machines like massagers aim to make it easy to get this kind of experience without human interaction. And now you can basically come home from work and completely immerse yourself in the environment you created without interacting with anyone else at all.
Can you talk about how eroticism is incorporated into your work?
It’s like a coincidence. I didn’t think, “Oh, I’m going to make this work sexy.”
It happened by chance, but to be honest, I was a little embarrassed. I never set out to make a work about eroticism or pleasure.
On the other hand, I feel that my work expresses its own sexuality through the way I compose it. These machines are meant to perform endless tasks without complaint. Reusing them into sculptures, projecting eroticism not only onto the viewer, but also onto the empty gallery over and over again. They go on and on. Repeat that endlessly until you fail.
I also think about how sexuality is an everyday thing. You can have too much of a good thing. You can masturbate forever.
I think that’s what they call it “Going”
I feel sick after a while. The machine gets pleasure, but then that pleasure gets stuck in a repetitive cycle. If there is no contrast to joy, then what is joy really?
One of the cheesy things I keep repeating is that the most important thing in life is contrast. I need something to look forward to and a change. Humans have an emotional breaking point. In some cases, they go to work endlessly and do the same thing every day for years. And at some point you just get furious and quit. In family and romantic relationships, repetition can provide a sense of security. Then one day, I said, “I can’t do it anymore.”
The idea that housewives go through so much effort and then become hysterical. And people say, “Why did my wife go crazy?” When she does the same thing every day.
What do you think about when procuring machinery for your work?
I buy these massage machines second hand. Therefore, it is clear that if something sells, it means that it is no longer wanted. The story is that it was desired for a purpose but failed to serve the purpose of comforting the body.
If you run it for hundreds of hours, some people will eventually die. This culture of convenience and planned obsolescence makes it very easy to throw it away, buy something similar in its place, find a way to repair it, and take ownership of the process.
I’ve heard that sometimes things break down when you’re selling your work. These works have a life cycle.
That’s something I have to deal with all the time. I have encountered this situation before. [where] Something like that happens. In that case someone should let me know. And I have to take the time and care to tell them how to fix things or replace parts. Even if someone buys something, they need to understand that it is a finite machine.
Since I received a used item, I may have used it 500 times and then sold it. I don’t even know where they are in their lifespan. In the future, I would like to be able to create my own systems without relying on mass-produced products. But that means I have to have certain knowledge, know how things are built and write my own instruction manual so that I can fix it when something goes wrong.
Because of entropy, and because machines need care just like our bodies. Actually, I want it to last a long time. I’m asking them something that they can’t promise either.
Everyone who has done dynamic work has their own story of something breaking or failing. Paintings, sculptures, ceramics, etc. also deteriorate over time.
Challenge something that should increase in value over time.
It can be seen as a museum exhibiting the carcasses of these creatures. In a way, I can see them resting and not having to work anymore. And there’s something really beautiful about it.
It helps you think about your relationship with things you own, such as your car. I don’t expect my car to keep running forever. Do you want it to run as long as possible? Yes. Does it require proper maintenance and care? Yes. Even if they are not human, they must be treated with respect. Things and possessions come and go in our lives, just like people.
Your work is currently on display at: Cleo The Project Space in Savannah, Georgia Until April 25, 2026.
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