Hyemin SON

Period: 2025/10/20 ~ 2025/11/19

Nation: South Korea

Genre: Installation, performance

Hyemin Son is a member of the Korean collective Rice Brewing Sisters Club (RBSC) and has been collaborating with Aletheia Hyun-Jin Shin and Soyoon Ryu since 2018. They experiment with “social fermentation” as an artistic practice, viewing it as an open-ended creative process that integrates visual art, performance, culinary arts, creative writing, oral history, ecological thinking, and the wisdom of previous generations.
In recent years, RBSC’s research has focused on Haenyeo (female divers)—women who harvest seaweed in the tidal zones of Busan. Since 2018, the collective has transformed their daily lives and labor into artistic works through microbial fermentation experiments. In 2022, they presented We, on the Rising Wave at the Busan Biennale, exploring the relationship between seaweed and women’s labor. Their 2023 Project Hashtag work focused on the various possibilities of red algae umugasari (agar-agar) as food, industrial material, and artistic medium.
RBSC has also conducted field interviews with Haenyeo in Japan and Jeju Island, connecting Busan, Jeju, Japan, and Taiwan to trace their skills, labor, and migration stories, continuing to share their lives and wisdom through art.