Jeong Geum-hyung conducts CPR on a medical mannequin as if the male dummy were in an urgent life-or-death situation. Her body moves in the fast yet steady rhythm required for the life-saving action. The scene, however, presents a rather erotic image – Jeong is completely naked.

“Voyeurism isn’t my intent – it’s just how things turn out in my performance, and that puts the audience in a voyeuristic situation,” says the winner of the 16th Hermes Foundation Missulsang art award. Her solo exhibition, timed to the receipt of the award, is at Atelier Hermes in Seoul.

The award gives emerging contemporary South Korean artists a chance to mount exhibitions at the Hermes and take part in the Hermes Foundation’s Paris residency programme.

Jeong, with a background in theatre and contemporary dance, is known for performances that connect various objects with her body. They involve all sorts of medical equipment, mannequins, sex toys and other objects presented as a “private collection”.

She categorises the objects based on their use and characteristics. The plastic body parts include the torsos, legs and other limbs of medical dummies, facemasks and an artificial penis. The equipment ranges from exercise machines and vacuum cleaners to a state-of-the art drone.

“The objects determine how the performance turns out,” says Jeong, who puts a lot of thought into which objects to buy and use. She visits medical-equipment stores and sex shops and places orders online. If what she orders doesn’t serve her intended purpose, it’s either left unused or used to bring about an unexpected outcome.

Her “Fitness Guide” performances incorporate exercise equipment, which she finds her own unique way of using. At a show last year at the alternative-art Common Centre, also in Seoul, Jeong made use of a human-like punching bag in a way that observers tended to interpret as masturbation.

For a series of performances since 2007 Jeong has mastered physical rehabilitation-training methods designed for people with disabilities and applied them to her medical dummies.

In the 160-minute “Rehab Training”, the dummy is made to rise up and make hand and body gestures.

Jeong happily accepts the label “feminist” artist, since she openly expresses women’s sexual desires through her unusual shows.

“I try to be a feminist in my performances,” she says. “My works aren’t a fight against the male-dominated society we live in. I solely focus on the objects themselves and think of ways to express my thoughts through them.”