Creating Creatures Beyond the Human Body in conversation with Nika Jeon (@ningyoasobi)

For Nika Jeon, known online as @ningyoasobi, the answer takes shape through handmade creatures that exist somewhere between experimental fashion, wearable sculpture, performance art, and imagination. Describing herself as a creature creator, Jeon constructs unconventional bodies that challenge our understanding of what it means to look human. Rather than simply dressing a performer, her creations invite them to inhabit an entirely different form of existence.

Each piece becomes a bridge between the imaginary and the real, allowing an otherwise impossible creature to briefly enter our world. Drawing from personal emotions, sensations, images, and the shifting experiences of her own life, Jeon develops beings that resist straightforward definitions. Their identities remain deliberately ambiguous, leaving space for viewers to imagine what might exist beneath their extraordinary forms.

Through movement and transformation, these creatures also challenge the boundaries between the wearer and the worn. The human body changes the creature, while the creature reshapes the person’s movements, behaviour, and perception of themselves. The result is an uncanny encounter in which the familiar becomes unfamiliar, and ordinary environments suddenly feel charged with possibility.

In conversation with RED-EYE World, Nika Jeon explores the origins of her creature-making practice, the relationship between imagination and reality, and the possibility of beings existing beyond human understanding. Her work proposes a world in which these creatures are not simply objects to observe, but living presences with their own identities, instincts, and place in nature.

For anyone discovering your work for the first time, how would you introduce yourself and describe what you do?

I’m a creature creator. I make my costumes by hand and use them to create characters and creatures that exist somewhere between the real world and my imagination.

Your work creates these incredible creature-like bodies that feel somewhere between sculpture, fashion, performance and mythology. Where did this practice begin for you?

I think it started with a desire to create something that didn’t feel entirely human. I’ve always been drawn to strange shapes, creatures and my own imaginary world. At some point, I started making costumes, and they became a way for me to bring these creatures into the real world.

You describe these pieces as not being costumes, but temporary bodies through which these creatures enter our world. What does it mean to you to create a body for something that doesn’t exist in our reality?

For me, creating a body for something that doesn’t exist is a way of giving it a chance to exist, even if only for a moment. I think of each piece as a kind of bridge between my imaginary world and reality. When I create these bodies, I’m not always trying to fully define what the creature is. I’m more interested in leaving some mystery and allowing the viewer to imagine what could be inside. Once someone puts the piece on, it becomes alive in a way that I couldn’t achieve on my own. I like the idea that these creatures can briefly enter our world, exist through another body, and then disappear again.

When someone inhabits one of these bodies, does the performer become the creature, or does the creature somehow change the person inside it?

I think it works both ways. The person gives the creature life, but at the same time, the creature changes the way the person moves and behaves. The shape of the body can make you move differently, see the world differently, or even feel less human for a moment. I find this transformation really interesting. The performer is still there, but their body becomes something unfamiliar. In a way, they meet somewhere in between the person becomes part of the creature, and the creature becomes part of the person.

Where do the creatures themselves come from? Are they inspired by specific myths, folklore and cultural references, or do they emerge through your own imagination?

Everything comes from my imagination. I don’t take a specific myth or creature and recreate it. Instead, different emotional stages of my life, images, and sensations that I see and feel all mix together in my mind and slowly transform into something of their own. I think the creatures are somehow a reflection of what I’m going through at different moments in my life. They don’t always have a clear meaning from the beginning sometimes their meaning becomes clear to me only while I’m creating them.

There’s something beautifully uncanny about seeing these creatures moving through real environments. What interests you about bringing something seemingly impossible into everyday life?

I think I’m interested in the moment when something that only existed in my imagination suddenly feels real. I like placing these creatures in ordinary environments and seeing how strange it makes the familiar world feel. For me, it’s a way of creating a small collision between two worlds my imaginary world and our reality. I like the idea that, for a moment, you might see something that shouldn’t exist there, but somehow does. I think this feeling of uncertainty is important to me. I don’t want the creatures to look completely out of place. I want them to feel as if they could have been there all along, just hidden from us.

Your work sits between art, fashion and performance, but it also feels connected to ideas of transformation and identity. What do you think happens to our perception of the human body when we see it become something else?

I think when the human body becomes something unfamiliar, we start to look at it differently. We stop seeing the person first and start seeing the shape, the movement, the creature. For me, that transformation makes the boundaries of the human body feel less fixed. A body can become something strange, fragile, powerful, or even non-human simply through changing its shape. I’m interested in that moment when you can no longer immediately understand what you’re looking at. It creates a distance from the familiar human form, and I think that gives us a chance to see the body in a completely different way.

Finally, if these creatures could exist independently from the humans who temporarily inhabit them, what do you imagine they would do once they entered our world?

I imagine they would simply explore the world. They would probably be curious about everything that exists in our reality places, people, nature, and things that seem completely ordinary to us. I don’t imagine them as necessarily dangerous or friendly. I think they would have their own nature, just like any living creature, and we wouldn’t always understand their intentions. Maybe at first they would hide from us and slowly begin to explore the world. I like imagining that they could exist somewhere around us moving through forests, deserts, abandoned places or cities, while most people would never realize they were there. I think that’s part of the world I’m trying to create — a world where these creatures have their own roles, helping and taking care of nature, while also feeling safe and like they truly belong there.

RED•EYE WORLD

Creating Creatures Beyond the Human Body. In conversation with Nika Jeon (@ningyoasobi)