GGOKTU-GAKSI means “wooden doll” in Korean, a figure animated by strings or a guiding hand, caught between autonomy and submission. Growing up in South Korea, Pyeori Jung observed how discipline and play are braided together, games in childhood reinforced obedience, rigid education and mandatory military service ingrained a sense of control over movement.
The first puppet show Pyeori saw was in a classroom: a teacher pacing, striking his own back with a ruler as he observed students. His repetitive motions became predictable, and the children instinctively turned his act into a game.
For GGOKTU-GAKSI, Put Your Hand into Me, Pyeori Jung and Paloma Bouhana gathered five artists to explore the balance between individual expression and collective discipline, asking: Who pulls the strings? The exhibition questions autonomy, submission, and resistance, revealing the unseen hands that shape movement—both on stage and in life.
During the opening night, Angélique Aubrit & Ludovic Beillard’s life-sized handcrafted puppets waver between control and independence, guided by an unseen voice. Angyvir Padilla’s 3D-printed sculptures, embedded in blue sand, emerge from a collaboration with her mother—objects from their home in Caracas transformed into translucent childhood relics. Bin Koh’s Field Trip, a blackboard triptych borrowing from Cézanne’s The Large Bathers, meditates on birth, utopia, and death. Laure Prouvost’s Metal Man—a surreal hybrid of human and machine—points forward like a puppet freed from its strings yet still bound by mechanics.
Finally Pyeori Jung revisits his teacher’s disciplinary tools, examining how puppetry mirrors broader societal structures. Meanwhile, Paloma Bouhana presents four sculpted figures created by her young students, a playful challenge to artistic authorship and labor, opening space for creation unburdened by constraint.
@huidenclub Rotterdam
Invited by
@livvaisberg
poster illustration
by
@antonstuckardt
OPENING
28th of March
Performance from 19:00
CLOSING
13th of May
