Wing Theater

Jewyo Rhii’s Wing Theater, commissioned by EMPAC, is at once a self-contained theater, a sculptural archive, and a staging ground for storytelling. The installation uses walls that store objects, automated structures, and simple moving elements to give physical shape to personal and public stories, which are shown through precise gestures and motions. The project oscillates between installation and activated performance space, with Rhii offering two live activations daily throughout the festival.

At its base is a large-scale structure composed of six wings, each carrying an assembly of sculptures, images, and projections. These wings become engines for conversation—speaking with ghosts from Rhii’s past, with those who assert power by seizing and privatizing public space, and with the audience gathered in the studio. Throughout staging grounds, Wing Theater subtly spreads out across the studio, setting its stories in motion. In Studio 1, the piece evokes the atmosphere of an artist’s studio transformed into a dynamic stage—blurring the boundary between private process and collective encounter.

Wing Theater asks what it means to make, act, and think in the world as an artist. Two narrative trajectories extend across its physical structure. Viewed front to back, a series of vignettes charts Rhii’s path from her formation as an artist in Seoul, to her nomadic years working across Europe, and to her time in Queens, New York. Back to front, Wing Theater is a meditation on how the rapid pace of urban development transforms both people and place.

Widely recognized for her installations and her practice spanning sculpture, video, and performance, Jewyo Rhii approaches art-making as a mode of shared experience. Her work is marked by a sensitivity to the afterlives of artistic practice, and to the small, intimate acts that quietly shape collective histories.

Each performance is 60 minutes in duration.

• FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 20
• 6:30 + 9:15PM, Studio 1—Goodman
• PERFORMANCE, FREE, RSVP
• Wing Theater / Jewyo Rhii / RSVP
• SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 21
• 1:30 + 4PM, Studio 1—Goodman
• PERFORMANCE, FREE, RSVP
• Wing Theater / Jewyo Rhii / RSVP
• TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 24–FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2026
• 11AM–5PM, Studio 1—Goodman
• INSTALLATION, FREE
• Wing Theater / Jewyo Rhii / No reservation necessary
• 1 + 3PM, Studio 1—Goodman
• PERFORMANCE, FREE, RSVP
• Wing Theater / Jewyo Rhii / RSVP
• SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2026
• 1PM, Studio 1—Goodman
• PERFORMANCE, FREE, RSVP
• Wing Theater / Jewyo Rhii / RSVP