Dr. Justus Jonas, 2018

The apotheke is the inner-city showcase of the Academy of Fine Arts Mainz: a 90-square-meter exhibition window visible only from the street—both a challenge for artists and an attraction for passersby. It serves as an artistic stage where faculty members, students, and invited guests of the Academy can present their work. The exhibitions are conceived to function without physical entry and to remain perceptible to those passing by at any time. Occasional openings—customarily during vernissages or, as with the current exhibition, at announced performance dates or by appointment—are nevertheless possible. 

The current installation by the Korean artists Eunu Lee and Naehoon Huh is titled Hikikomori, a Japanese term meaning “those who shut themselves away.” In psychiatric terminology, it refers to individuals who refuse to leave their parents’ home and withdraw from family and society for at least six months. First identified in Japan, this phenomenon of voluntary isolation and social alienation has since been observed in South Korea and other countries. Typically emerging during adolescence and often associated with school refusal, it increasingly affects young professionals overwhelmed by societal expectations, whose fear of failure leads to internal retreat and social avoidance. Current estimates range from 50,000 to 1.6 million individuals. 

At the center of the exhibition stands a room mounted on wheels—a locked, mobile living unit scaled to the floor plan of the apotheke. Inside resides an invisible person who occasionally shifts the structure’s position but never leaves it. Cables descend from the ceiling and connect to multiple monitors attached to a column. These screens reveal the hidden individual’s activities and responses when addressed. They display internet platforms, social networks, and computer games, as well as moments when the occupant places actual food orders. 

Through a keyboard installed at the former medication hatch beside the entrance, visitors can communicate with the concealed inhabitant. Responses appear in various languages, yet it remains uncertain whether they originate from the room before them or from elsewhere entirely. Can passersby establish contact and release the individual from isolation? Is it possible to form an image of someone without their physical presence? In what spaces do participants move, encounter one another, and interact?