About
Jiwoo is interested in how people experience and interpret everyday culture, especially within communities and shared spaces.
Her work often explores identity, behaviour, and the ways people engage with systems, translating these ideas into both visual and interactive outcomes. She enjoys combining research with storytelling to create work that feels personal, relatable, and open to interpretation.
Her recent project, Different Ways of Being a Fan, looks at the fandom of the KBO League—the highest level professional baseball league in South Korea—and the different ways people experience being a fan. Instead of defining what a “real” fan is, Jiwoo explores fandom as something flexible and personal. Through a system that includes a website, fan kit, zine, calendar and video, the project invites users to reflect on and interpret their own fan identity.
Through her work, she aims to create experiences that encourage reflection and offer new ways of seeing familiar cultural behaviours.
Different Ways of Being a Fan
Different Ways of Being a Fan explores how sports fandom is experienced in diverse and personal ways through the context of KBO baseball.
As the fandom grows and becomes more diverse, fans are often judged and categorised based on factors such as knowledge, time spent and consumption. This has led to the emergence of distinctions between “real” and “fake” fans, creating pressure for individuals to prove their authenticity.
Through interviews and research, the project reveals that these boundaries are unclear and subjective. Instead of defining what makes a “real” fan, the project reframes fandom as a spectrum of experiences shaped by individual perspectives.
This idea is translated into a system of design outcomes, including a website, fan type kit, zine, calendar and video. Each outcome allows users to explore, interpret and express their own fan identity in different ways.
By shifting the focus from judgement to experience, the project encourages a more open and inclusive understanding of fandom.
Christine Mae
Nur Syuhadah Binte Suhaimi
Clemence Chew
Zelfi Chung
Kit Teoh
Jennifer Effendy
