Woo Jin Joo’s I Hear Things Existing With Me. Photograph: Robert Chadwick/Woo Jin Joo View image in fullscreen Woo Jin Joo’s I Hear Things Existing With Me. Photograph: Robert Chadwick/Woo Jin Joo Art and design Interview Meet the magical creatures inspired by shamanism, folklore … and an old Ikea bag Alice Fisher From ceramic goblin feet to furry disembodied legs, Korean-Chinese artist Woo Jin Joo is using London junk to inject the art world with a spirit of playfulness
Tue 1 Sep 2026 16.16 CEST Last modified on Wed 2 Sep 2026 03.31 CEST Share Prefer the Guardian on Google W oo Jin Joo’s studio is full of magic. Ceramic green goblin feet line the windowsill, disembodied furry legs jut out of one white wall and, on the table behind where the Korean-Chinese artist sits drinking tea, a headless being dressed in a black coat squats, arms aloft in warning.
There are also neat racks of colourful thread next to a freehand embroidery machine, the source of this supernatural horde. This is where Joo creates much of her art – surface embroideries and sculptural 3D creatures inspired by Korean myth, philosophy and the relationship between humans and the natural world.
“When I use the embroidery machine I feel like I’m painting,” she says. “It’s as if each thread has its own life.”
View image in fullscreen Formation Study I (detail), 2025, by Woo Jin Joo. Photograph: Robert Chadwick/Woo Jin Joo Joo was born and raised in Korea – mainly by her grandmother – before moving to the UK 12 years ago to study at Central Saint Martins and then the Royal Academy in London. Swapping east Asia for west Europe started her thinking about how she was shaped by culture and the world around her. “That transition made me want to explore who I am and how I see things.”
In 2021 she worked out how she wanted to go about it. She embroidered the 10 Daoist symbols of longevity, typically used to wish someone long life, on to an old Ikea bag – a plastic product that could take up to 1,000 years to decompose.
View image in fullscreen … Woo Jin Joo with one of her works Photograph: Jamie Trounce/courtesy of Cockpit Studios “It was that work that made me feel a connection, a way of drawing ideas together to make a transformation that resonated with religious beliefs as well as myth,” she says.
Guided by the idea from Korean folklore and shamanism that inanimate objects can become spirited beings called dokkaebi , she looked at the junk discarded in London with fresh eyes. Now she often uses found objects in her work – a creature with many feet peers out of an old shirt sleeve; a discarded wooden side-table now sprouts a 5ft-tall dokkaebi leg. “I love the idea that the small and mundane have spirit,” she explains. “We need to realise that the ordinary is special.”
View image in fullscreen Tireless, by Woo Jin Joo. Photograph: Woo Jin Joo Joo is part of a new wave of creatives showing that traditional, sometimes archaic, craft can be used to make very modern, joyful work. Makers are not just keeping these skills alive but evolving how they can be used. “I think a lot of makers are very experimental now, craft is no longer just about material knowledge, but about experimenting and playfulness. This means more people are drawn to it,” says Joo.
She is preparing for her first solo show, Bodily Inbetweenness, at London’s Ruup & Form gallery, which opens during Shoreditch Design Week. For this, she explores a new type of spirit, human emotions and how we display them – a c…