Fan Artist Spotlight: Izumo’s Natural Imperfections
Still from Izumo’s mixed media video artwork, “Blame It on My Youth” (2023).
Izumo is a mixed-media and video artist whose productions blur the boundaries between paper collage and dynamic digital production. Inspired by K-pop media and idol figures like SHINee’s Onew and NCT’s Taeyong, Izumo understands her practice as an expression of the human: its imperfections, its messiness, and its capacity for devotion.
As she transforms meticulously composed mixed-media pieces into smoothly edited video productions, the resulting blend of analogue and digital situates her art at the nexus of production and reception: a space where the abstract circulation of K-pop media across digital channels becomes transformed and remade by the attention of human touch.
For this piece, we feature selections from Izumo’s portfolio and ask her about her method and motivations.
“Blame It on My Youth” by Izumo (2023). Mixed media video art adapted from WayV’s “On My Youth,” 2023.
How did you find your way into K-pop and its fandom art/video spaces?
This might be a common story, but it was COVID, and I was scrolling on TikTok. At some point, I came across that famous video of Felix dancing with his long hair. Before that moment, even though I had a friend who was into K-pop, I had been protecting myself from getting into it because I knew I could be obsessive over things. For instance, I already knew about the phenomenon of photocards, and I liked collecting things, so I was like, no, no, no—absolutely not.
But then there were more videos, and more TikToks, and eventually I said, okay, I'm giving up. And here we are.
As for fandom art . . . I first encountered fan art on Twitter [X], which made me curious about what the TikTok fanart scene was like. When I checked, I saw so many beautiful edits. I really admired them: all the transitions and effects looked so well done and cool. Actually, the first video artist who really impressed me was vvtobbi. I was so impressed by them.
[Editors’ Note: MENT features vvtobbi’s video art in Issue 001].
How has your journey with art and art making changed after you got into K-pop? How would you narrate that arc?
I started working with paper mediums really early, technically back when I was only a child. I really liked going to my mother's workplace, for instance, and printing images so that I could put them together. By age 16, I was producing primarily collage-style art.
When I found K-pop, something in my mind switched. I’m not sure whether to describe it as an aesthetic switch or a technical one—I think it was both. On the practical side, K-pop puts out a lot of new content incredibly fast. This creates the demand, as well as the expectation, of keeping up with changing aesthetic trends. I mean, K-pop shifts quite frequently between different styles to suit changing concepts.
This variety turned out to be incredibly useful for me. Before getting into K-pop, I had been feeling like my artistic technique was stuck, almost like being trapped in a cage—but after being exposed to K-pop, my inspiration shifted. It made me try different themes, new aesthetics, and unexpected mediums that I saw being used in the video content for K-pop idols and groups. I was also able to trace certain themes over a group’s body of work, and then echo it, play with it, or change it as the theme evolved.
I appreciate how you describe your own process as mirroring, and then remixing and changing, the received aesthetic styles of K-pop content. At this point, had you ever received formal art training? Or did you just create art on your own?
I just did things on my own! In my room, by myself.
And how did your paper-based solo practice evolve technically once K-pop came into the picture?
Yes, I began experimenting a lot. For instance, NCT’s Mark has a 2023 single called “Golden Hour.” It looked like the production team used 3D models or worked in After Effects to create the video’s unique feel, and then incorporated a lot of cool typography to enhance the overall look. It made me want to do something atypical in my own art.
For some context, “Golden Hour” uses an egg motif in both the visual production and lyrics of the song. In the music video, for instance, there are several scenes where Mark interacts with eggs: he smashes eggs against other objects, kicks a stylized yolk, steps on a printed image of eggshells, and delivers his verses while standing on a yolk-like design. I went crazy after that video came out: I decided to incorporate a real egg into my paper collage.
Honestly, I was a bit scared for my printer and my scanner. But I was obsessed with the egg motif and wanted to make something special. So I literally cracked a raw egg on top of my scanner and made a copy of it.
I printed it out, and then played with Mark's images from the release. It really ended up looking cool—it felt like the whole vibe of the music video emerged in my mixed-media work.
This is what I mean when I say K-pop, and artists like Mark, made me experiment with my craft. Before, I would use basic instruments for my practice, like crayons and ordinary drawing tools. But after K-pop, I tried to look at normal, everyday objects as a mode of expression.
“Golden Hour” by Izumo (2023). Mixed-media art of “Golden Hour” by Mark Lee (2023).
You have very beautiful collage videos and mixed-media videos on TikTok. Can you walk us through your process from idea to execution? What does that look like?
It always starts with something that catches my eye. I look through new releases and see if any frames from the videos capture me. When I find one, I say to myself, oh my god, that would look great in a mixed-media piece. Not every video or photo set works in this way—for instance, if the video uses a lot of small visual details or too many complicated shapes, it becomes really hard to put together since it creates too much noise in the context of a mixed-media work. So, I tend to look for simpler images, shapes, and colors in the source media.
I also try to avoid running with the first idea that comes to mind with the images I find. I had a professor once who told us that the first thing that comes to your mind is likely the most common: the thing that everybody else would think to do. So, push further. In this spirit, every time I make mixed media, I'm trying to do something different. It’s my way of not copying myself and also not falling into tired patterns.
After I choose something, I start thinking about the storytelling in the small pieces I’ve extracted from the source. I'm also editing in my head. I don't know how to explain this part. I sit, and I look at a certain picture or a specific frame, and I think, how would I put another picture here? How do I make a transition here? For me, that's the whole point of mixed media: to create new dynamic transitions that have the potential to change the original story.
Finally, after I establish the editing arc in my head, I print out all the pages with the images I’ll need. To create those images, I go into Adobe Premiere; I arrange the pictures, print them, and then start making adjustments to small details that will smooth out the video transitions I have in mind. I really love working on these small details because it helps me create a piece that rewards multiple viewings. If you want to rewatch my mixed media pieces, you’ll find something new each time.
When the story is complete, I’ll scan everything back to digital and put it together in video editing software. And then it’s done!
Why did you choose this particular mode to work in? What are you aiming to do in your mixed media work? And how would you describe your own style?
I think this question is the hardest for me to answer because I feel like my style is all over the place. It's really hard to put it into words.
But the one time a person wrote to me that they loved my style, they wrote something really helpful and illuminating. They said “it’s so perfect in its imperfections, which are so normal and so magical when it comes to mixed media.” This description was one I loved because it meant that people could understand that my work is naturally not perfect. I’m trying to aim for a messiness where things are not entirely right: it's incomplete.
I think what is interesting about the messiness, or the incompleteness, that you're talking about is the way it foregrounds process over product. By that, I don't mean that there's not a final product but rather that the final product makes obvious the labor you put in: the messiness of drawing, printing, scanning, etc. Everything you have to physically do.
Yes, yes, that's exactly it.
That's cool, especially in contrast to K-pop, which can be very polished and centered material—symmetrical or visually perfect. Your response to this source media seems intentionally messy, incomplete, and procedural.
Oh! Yes.
Given that your work can be so different from the K-pop media style, how do you see your work as saying something for or about the idols around which you create?
Overall, as you said, the K-pop style is often really polished and oriented toward perfection. Sometimes I'm making a piece, actually, and I see that there's a stray dot or mark I made with a pen on an artist's face, and I think, oh, my god, they would fire me for that!
But in general, I will say that there are also departures from this polished approach in K-pop itself, or moments that lean more toward my own mixed-media style. The example that stands out the most is “Baggy Jeans” by NCT 127. That was one of the rare times when I felt the company decided to make something messy and bring out the more human, imperfect dimensions of their idols and artists. It felt real.
Yes, the sequence towards the end of the “Baggy Jeans” video where the outfits flicker and change over the members’ bodies feels like your work to me: the colors, the transitions, and the blurry, almost pencil-drawn, effect.
Oh, thank you so much.
Re: the messiness of human touch, I think even when you take a more curated or polished media object, like Onew’s “Circle,” your rendition adds a new dimension. You augment the original intention of the music in a way that the genre of the K-pop music video isn't always equipped to do.
It's really cool that you frame it as exaggerating the touch of the human. Nowadays, so much of the discourse in art has shifted to things like AI, art apps, and artificial technology, but I maintain that you can feel the energy of something done by a person. The reality of it.
“Circle (O)” by Izumo (2024). Mixed media video art, adapted from Onew’s “Circle (O),” 2023.
On the topic of fan spaces, you wouldn't be working with K-pop unless you yourself were a fan of K-pop. What is the relationship between your artwork and fan love? Do you feel like that fan love is part of the process, and how so?
This may be a bit obvious, but I think that through your art, you show your support and love to the artist. It's a cliché, but I still think we need to talk about it. We never know how K-pop artists “really” feel or what they “really” think about their work and their fans, but I hope if they see, for example, how many hashtags and artworks NCT 127 has, that the members’ hearts feel a bit happier. Personally, I put my whole soul into this work because I think they would feel happy someone chose them.
And on this point, I hope that through these pieces of paper that I touch, and put the whole range of my human feelings into, that they’d be able to sense that care. So yes, I think it's all about love and support. People in the K-pop industry go through a lot of difficult times starting from their training era and then long after their debut. I understand my art as a response to that struggle: it's about the love and support to help them through.
What role do you think fan artists play in the broader sphere of K-pop media?
As a fan artist, I have two main purposes. One is personal, and I think the other one is social.
For my personal goal . . . K-pop changes month by month. We see a lot of concepts; we see new bands; we see changing trends. As I witness K-pop’s growth over different eras and generations, I want to grow with it. I want to use that as inspiration to evolve my own art, to try new stuff, to reflect new sounds or styles. I’ve been thinking a lot, actually, about how ATEEZ has been using Latin-inspired music recently. I love that their sound changes in directions like that, and it makes me also want to play with and experiment with new styles.
As for society, in my country, they still think of K-pop as strange—I’ve never been happy about that. In response, I would love to show through my art that K-pop culture can be legitimate. I always see comments on social media, for instance, that misunderstand or miscategorize K-pop artists and media. I saw a comment on one of my TikTok mixed-media productions, for instance, where somebody wrote that they didn’t like BTS but that my mixed-media video was interesting and good. But it was NCT in the video, not BTS.
At first I was angry, but then I thought, well, this person watched my video from beginning to end and took the time to write me this comment. Maybe in a few weeks or months the person will wake up and say, what was that song? And I really hope that through the memory of my art, and the impression it made, they’ll come to find and appreciate NCT.
I think of things like this not just as marketing or promotion for the artists but also as support and visibility for people who are attracted to K-pop as a media subculture. It redefines that space away from “weirdos” or crazy fans into one that pays attention to artistically valuable music, production, visuals, and talent.
For the last question: what is your favorite video or mixed-media work you've produced? And why?
For animation, I really love my mixed-media video on NCT’s Taeyong. I personally love Taeyong; he’s the kind of person I would love to be friends with. I just really enjoy his personality.
The topic of this mixed-media piece was what I called “Tae-versity,” as in Taeyong plus diversity. I focused on this aspect because Taeyong showcases so many different feelings and is a person with several different sides. I did my best to show the emotions he has. On that note, his last album incorporated several different genres: it’s sentimental; it's rap; it feels like Taeyong’s own personal genre. So, I dedicated this mixed-media video to him. Ə
“Tae-versity” by Izumo (2024). Mixed-media video art adapted from Taeyong’s “TAP,” 2024.