Koreans’ profound love for food extends far beyond nourishment—food becomes memory, identity, and emotion.
This immersive VR project reimagines Jesa, the traditional Korean ancestral rite of offering food to ancestors, through personal memory, embodied perspective, and digital storytelling. Drawing from the intimate rituals of my own family, the work invites participants to enter the ceremony as an ancestral spirit themselves.
Within this sacred virtual space, food becomes a vessel of remembrance. Participants float across a Jesa table rendered in vivid sensory detail—each dish embedded with recorded wishes, sounds, and textures that evoke family, longing, and spiritual presence. In this liminal realm, the boundary between past and present dissolves, inviting reflection on identity, memory, and what it means to be both remembered and remembering.
Artist Bio
Sam Sunwoo is a producer and artist with over eight years of experience in the Korean and Canadian media industries. She has produced internationally acclaimed, award-winning animated series and videos, earning recognition for her creative direction and production expertise. Her current practice explores the immersive media, with a focus on interactive and emotionally resonant storytelling. Through virtual reality and hybrid formats, she examines memory, identity, and cultural rituals, inviting audiences into reflective and participatory experiences.