"Unruly Vessel" is a solo exhibition concluding Rachel Youn’s research and production residency at Scuola Piccola Zattere. It brings together new works developed in Venice alongside recent pieces.

Youn works with kinetic sculpture and installation, combining wellness devices—such as electric massagers, rocking chairs, and exercise equipment—with artificial plants. Through repetitive motion and ritual-like gestures, Youn's works reflect on individual and collective behaviors embedded in contemporary life.

The artist repurposes secondhand wellness products that have fallen into disuse due to malfunction or obsolescence. Once designed to improve bodies, these objects now embody failure. Youn reactivates them by redirecting their mechanical movement onto synthetic plants, creating hybrid, absurd figures that oscillate between eroticism and discomfort, pleasure and pain. Trapped in continuous motion, these forms suggest a restless search for fulfillment that edges toward self-destruction, eliciting both empathy and unease.

In this exhibition, Youn explores the intersection of religious ritual, spatial imagery, and systems of control—echoing historical dynamics tied to Venice. The new works draw on Christian liturgical practices such as Palm Sunday and baptism, alongside traditions of bodily discipline and punishment.

During the residency, Youn investigated devices designed to regulate the body, tracing how institutions like healthcare and criminal justice have imposed movement as both productive and coercive force. These histories resonate with contemporary cultures of wellness and self-optimization.

At the center of the exhibition is a large-scale installation inspired by rowing benches. Referencing the image of the “ship of fools,” historically associated with Venice, Youn animates long palm branches like oars through mechanical exercise devices. The resulting motion evokes a continuum between forced labor and ritual, punishment and care, therapy and madness.