tooth for tooth, 2022, 156 x132x 3 inches, Stainless steel pipe, anti-climb security spikes

tooth for tooth suspends anti-climb security spikes as skeletal frames within a void. In South Korea, these jagged metal teeth are so ubiquitous they have become invisible—hostility normalized into the quiet grammar of the home. But these are not merely deterrents. Unlike the ancient lex talionis, which required a crime to justify retaliation, these spikes punish in advance. They presuppose guilt. A victim is not responded to but anticipated—violence institutionalized as a prerequisite for peace, etched into the very walls that claim to protect us. What the work exposes is not cruelty but architecture: the moment a weapon becomes infrastructure, and fear becomes the silent language of domestic life.