Casey Kaplan
The Here and There Collective
Artist Feature: Cindy Ji Hye Kim
October 21, 2025
As we’re sitting here at your second solo show with Casey Kaplan, can we start with the title, Saboteur: A Prehistoric Wish, and the inspiration behind the exhibition?
Titles usually come last for me. Much like painting, it’s a process of free association. The show’s themes have a lot to do with fall and winter, a period of closures and endings. So I was thinking about what it means to end things on one’s own terms, and I thought about the word “saboteur,” a kind of self-sabotage, as a way to reawaken yourself. “A prehistoric wish” is a Freudian term for happiness rooted not in material things but in an unfulfilled childhood wish. For a long time, my work has explored the concept of death. Recently, I’ve been thinking especially about the concept of the Death Drive, a kind of force that can paradoxically propel life forward.
Can you talk a bit about these wooden figures that are guiding visitors throughout the show? They’re quite different from how you had interacted with wood in your previous work.
I came across the Kokdu figures while researching for the show in a book called Treasures of Korea. I had seen these figures before at the National Museum of Korea; they are ceremonial figurines used in traditional funerary practices. I found them cute and joyous, and the juxtaposition with death was really interesting.
For a long time, I avoided referencing Korean art because, growing up, it was taught in a nationalistic, patriotic way. It felt cliché or too close to home. As I moved away from that, I became more drawn to ancient Korean objects because they felt less familiar.