Sulme & Jae-Nder Fluid
Sulme & Jae-Nder Fluid is a Korean artist duo composed of Yeosulme Kang (b. 1995) and Jaehwa Baek (b. 1993), working between Bremen and South Korea. Yeosulme Kang completed the Diplom and Meisterschüler at Hochschule für Künste Bremen (DE). Jaehwa Baek studied Fine Arts at Hongik University (KR), completed his undergraduate degree at Coventry School of Art & Design (GB), and received an MFA from Hochschule für Bildende Künste Hamburg (DE).
As a duo, they examine social phenomena from a queer-migrant perspective, working in video and installation, especially through illusory imagery and nonlinear spatial arrangements. Their practice centers on fluidity and the notion of “spatial identity,” addressing stories of queer-migrant individuals and spatiality, linguistic experiences as migrants, and the deconstruction of the symbolism embedded in migration-related architectures. Recently, they have interviewed undocumented migrants in Korea, weaving these accounts into what they call a “hydro-diaspora.”
Selected exhibitions include ARKO Art Center(아르코 미술관), Seoul; thealit – Frauen.Kultur.Labor; Künstler:innenhaus Bremen; Stadtgalerie Künstlerhaus Lauenburg; Städtische Galerie Eichenmüllerhaus; HIAP, Suomenlinna (Helsinki); Space ZUNK; Gallery IN Seoul; and Art For Lab, Anyang etc. They have undertaken residencies at HIAP Suomenlinna, thealit – Frauen.Kultur.Labor, and subnet Salzburg. They were selected by Arts Council Korea as one of the Young Artists of 2025 and participated in “ARKO Day 2025”; were shortlisted among the final three for the Lemgo 25/26 Junge Kunst Stipendium; and in 2023 were the sole recipient of the Helsinki Artists’ Stipendium selected by Künstler:innenhaus Bremen. Additional support includes project funding from the Senator für Kultur Bremen; Arts Council Korea’s Young Artist Fund (Visual Arts); and the GyeongGi Province Cultural Foundation Visual Arts grant.
Hydro-Diaspora
Intermission 02.-08.10.2025
This project is supported by the Senator für Kultur Bremen 2025 (Queer Culture section), Arts Council Korea, and the GyeongGi Art Foundation.
Video work, installation, research material
Opening:
2nd of October at 7 pm
Open Studio:
October 3 to 7, from 2 to 6 p.m.
Arbeitszimmer thealit
St. Jürgen-Str. 157/159 Bremen
We are Sulme & Jae-Nder Fluid, an artist duo based in Korea and Bremen, composed of Yeosulme Kang and Jaehwa Baek. Grounded in our identities as queer migrants, we explore social phenomena and render them as metaphorical, non-linear images across video and installation.
At the center of our practice is research into spatiality and selfhood, along with its expanded notion of place identity. A core concept running through our work is fluidity: a metaphor for identities that shift in form as bodies move through space. We attend to how individuals interact with particular places and how those experiences extend into place identity.
In this project, we articulate and develop the concept of Hydro-Diaspora. Rather than fixed nationality, gender, or lineage, it posits identities that ceaselessly flow and transform, drawing on water’s vitality, border-dissolving qualities, and cycles. In our work, all “bodies”, human and nonhuman, are understood as flowing beings, like tributaries branching from a single current. We envision a diaspora of beings connected through water, viewing the nature of identity as liquid fluidity.
Positioned as queer migrants living in Bremen, we take our own location and experiences as both starting point and conduit. The first axis begins in Pohang, Korea, an industrial city and Jaehwa’s hometown where we interview two undocumented migrants and produce newly reworked video pieces that protect their status while amplifying their voices. This approach aims to surface migrant perspectives and overturn migration discourses constrained by Eurocentric frames.
The second axis connects the watercourses of the Han River running through Seoul and the Paldang Dam in Gyeonggi Province with the rivers in Bremen. We weave the flows of water with our bodies and stories—having moved across several countries and now rooted in Bremen—to realize video and installation works that directly visualize Hydro-Diaspora.
Though these two axes unfold differently, they ultimately converge into a single current. Centering the fluidities of queerness, migration, bodies, and water, we seek to create an artistic space that builds new narrative communities and sensorial solidarities.
More about Sulme & Jae-Nder Fluid:
https://www.sulmenfluid.com