Anne Duk Hee Jordan

Biography

Anne Duk Hee Jordan is a German-Korean artist and professor for Environmental Intervention whose immersive installations interleave scientific knowledge with poetic and futuristic imagination. Before turning to art, Jordan trained and worked as a therapist specializing in children with neurodevelopmental conditions including autism, worked in neurology and oncology, and briefly studied electrical engineering, a wide-ranging background she draws on to treat technology, biology, and ecology as deeply interconnected fields. Her practice centers kinetic sculptures, water tanks, robotics, sound, and video to build environments that place humans on the same horizontal plane as other organisms and systems, resisting the idea that human intelligence sits above other forms of planetary intelligence such as those of slime molds, bacteria, or phytoplankton. Her exhibition The End Is Where We Start From, developed for KunstHausWien in Vienna and curated by Barbara Horvath, filled two floors with a rainwater-fed waterscape, painted textiles, robotic sculptures, and living organisms including snails and fish, treating the exhibition itself as a living, evolving organism rather than a fixed display. Related works such as Worlds Away explore phytoplankton's outsized role in producing the planet's oxygen, while Atmospheres of Breathing considers questions of breath, symbiosis, and who has the right to breathe, themes shaped in part by the COVID-19 pandemic. Jordan is represented by Alexander Levy in Berlin and has exhibited at institutions including ZKM Karlsruhe, consistently using humor to deliver sharp critiques of technological exploitation, colonialism, and humanity's assumed dominance over other forms of life.