Artist Dae Uk Kim is featured in de Volkskrant: “Bestaat er zoiets als een homo-interieur? Nee, maar de zoektocht naar erkenning zie je er wel in terug (Is there such a thing as a gay interior? No, but the search for recognition is reflected in it)”
12 October 2024
Author: Jeroen Junte
English Version:
The queer collage
The Gaga chandelier is covered in a skin-colored plastic and decorated with sturdy dog leashes. The bulb lights emerge from black-painted household mops, which look like wigs. The exuberant creation hangs from a chain from the ceiling. 'It's an homage to Lady Gaga and her positive message of equality for everyone, regardless of where you come from or what you look like,' says designer Dae Uk Kim. In his work, he celebrates his homosexual orientation, which had no place in the conservative environment in which he grew up in South Korea. His Elektra chair consists of car tires with a flesh-colored coating that form graceful arm and back rests; the black plastic chair legs look like seductive women's pumps. 'I transformed the inferior materials into an object of desire. This chair is an outsider, just like me.'
Mutant is the name of the ambiguous furniture collection in which lust and self-love and everyday materials and eccentric shapes come together. Kim has magnified all his desires, frustrations and fears. As a child, he wanted long hair, nail polish and high heels. 'I had to travel to the other side of the world to find my freedom', says the designer, who graduated from the Design Academy Eindhoven in 2020. 'Now I challenge stereotypical ideas about sexuality, gender and beauty.'
Kim’s grotesque objects do not conform to the platitude of pink streamers and unruffled hotness that we know from the Village People dress-up box. “There is no single, defined gay aesthetic, just as there is no such thing as ‘the gay man’,” explains designer Adam Nathaniel Furman (hen/hun), co-author of the book Queer Spaces. An Atlas of LGBTQ+ Places and Stories (2022), a historical overview of interiors and places where the LGBTQ+ community has made its mark. “If there is a common denominator in queer interiors, it is that collages of personal memories and carefully collected objects are interspersed with historical references to ‘otherness’. Gays, lesbians, transgender people and other queers have had to search for their identity. Who am I? Who do I feel connected to? This personal search for recognition and identification is reflected in the design of their living environments.”