In works like falls (2022), Jinhee (2022), and Haven (2023), the artist constructs sculptural installations through the arrangement of objects ranging from rocks, seeds, paper packing materials, fired clay, and cast iron sculptures. In each of these works, Ro transforms the familiar: abstracting objects and forms from their original context and function to call attention to their innate qualities, considering their texture, color, shape, weight, and sound. For Haven, the artist constructed the frame of a dining table with no tabletop, leaving empty spaces between the thin wooden beams. Spread throughout the structure are a variety of objects and materials like a steel rod, an acrylic sheet, a copper pipe, seeds, essays about her practice, and a paper packing tray. “Being precisely ambiguous is important to me because when you’re puzzled by what you’re seeing, you see things even more closely,” says Ro. “You observe the thing as what it is instead of what it means or what it’s symbolizing.”

Frequently, the artist’s installations are brought to life through fragmented and multilingual narrative performances. Ro’s sculptural installation Niro (2024), a skeletal, wooden reconstruction of her late father’s Kia Niro car, is activated through a series of performances that deconstruct her relationship with her father and the concept of the road trip. In her performance, the artist laboriously deconstructs the model Niro and drags it through the space while reciting snippets of prose in English and Korean that describe her complex relationship with her father and his passing. Within her installation falls, Ro and her collaborator Jieun Uhm perform and share disparate narratives as they meander through the sculptural installation: one narrative describes macroeconomic statistics and world news while the other articulates a personal history of her own experiences with moving and immigration. In each of Ro’s performances, she draws upon physical experiences to convey ephemeral memories, scenarios, and perspectives that exist without specific linguistic or physical referents. “What felt the most real, or close to life, was performance involving the body,” says the artist. “You feel the weight, you feel the texture, you hear the sound, it is there, tangible. But, with this tangible thing, you create intangible scenes in the mind.” Through her work, Ro constructs affective environments and constellations of meaning and feeling that capture and carry our collective memory and experience.