Photo Description: The desk valve of an archaeologist who discovered what artist Joo Hyun-soo imagines as a future clone (there is also the number of the company he created), the future set by artist Joo Hyun-soo

At Gallery Iez (52-1 Insadong-gil, Seoul), artist Juhyunsoo (b. 1998) recently presented a thought-provoking solo exhibition that ran from September 24 to 30. 

The show establishes what the artist calls an “imaginary archaeology”—a speculative excavation into the ethics and evolution of humanness itself. 

The artist begins with a question that borders on science fiction: “What if cloned humans existed—and were discovered as fossils tens of thousands of years from now?” Yet, rather than remaining within the realm of fantasy, this premise expands into a deeply historical and moral inquiry. It recalls the long trajectory through which humans have dehumanized one another—through slavery, war,

 propaganda—and transforms the cloned human into a mirror for our own ethical failures. While the narrative of cloning often aligns with scientific speculation, Juhyunsoo approaches it from an anthropological and political angle. 

His “fossilized” sculptures function not merely as representations of the body but as social symbols—traces of how humanity has turned itself into an object of reproduction and control. 

Materially, the works are hybrids of ceramic and metal, combining fragility and rigidity in a delicate tension. 

The cold solidity of metal meets the brittle vulnerability of clay, reflecting the paradox of human existence: resilient yet easily shattered. 

This material dialectic leads viewers to reconsider the ontology of the human body and the fragility of its ethics.

 The skeletal forms erase markers of skin, gender, or race, reducing the human to a universal framework—an unindividualized structure that paradoxically reaffirms our shared essence. 

Juhyunsoo’s sculptures thus question what defines humanness once identity and individuality are stripped away. 

Intriguingly, the artist’s speculative timeline moves forward to look backward.

 The highlight of the exhibition features an imagined archaeological discovery—a corporate desk valve from the company that once produced cloned humans.

 This artifact, presented as if excavated from the distant future, collapses time, turning memory into mythology. 

Though influenced by The Island (2005), Juhyunsoo moves beyond cinematic imagination to engage with myth, science fiction, and archaeology. His world is “both distant and close,” as he puts it—uncannily familiar yet hauntingly alien.

 Rather than prophesying technological progress, his “fossils of tomorrow” are warnings about the erosion of humanity. 

Within the discourse of the posthuman, Juhyunsoo occupies a singular position: he is less interested in cyborg utopias than in how imagined clones might themselves decay into traces—ethical remains of a civilization that once was.

 Ultimately, his fossils are mirrors of the present, not relics of the future. 

They compel us to reflect on how our society, with its history of domination and erasure, might be remembered—or misremembered—by those who come after.

 In this way, Juhyunsoo’s imagined archaeology is not about what we will find, but about what we are leaving behind.