Art etc.
About
I am a 2nd generation Korean American born and raised in San Antonio, TX. My practice is driven by
a series of hyper-fixated anxieties and an innate weariness of being perceived - informed by my Korean, American, and queer identities.
Materiality and texture form the basis of my work. I use markers of ancient, traditional, and contemporary Korean art forms, such as 한지 Hanji (traditional mulberry paper making and manipulation) and 보자기Bojagi (ancient quilted textiles), and 만화 Manhwa (Korean print cartoons), as well as painting, photography, and performance art, to make work that, in many ways, parallels the work of Frankenstein in creating his monster—a stitching together and reviving of the formerly repressed and seemingly disparate parts of myself.
All of this is mirrored in the nature of the materials I work with, such as paper and textiles: at first glance, they appear to be discrete and stable, yet upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that they are actually fragile compositions of many small, interconnected parts, in continuous flux.
Much of my work is a kind of micrography; I zoom in on the minutiae of surfaces to explore the ways in which the apparent order of material can become a confused mess under close visual interrogation, just as our own sense of self might fragment and become muddled the closer we look.
I earned my BFA in Studio Art from the University of Texas at Austin and currently run the Exhibits Program for the Asian American Resource Center at the City of Austin.
I have performed in and exhibited my work in venues such as ArtUs Co. (Austin, TX 2023), Zygote Press (Cleveland, OH 2023), the UMLAUF Sculpture Garden (Austin, TX 2023), the Visual Arts Center (Austin, TX 2023, 2022), Manor House (Austin, TX 2022), FAC2 (Austin, TX 2022), ICOSA Collective (Austin, TX 2022), Of Color TX | Almost Real HQ (Austin, TX 2022), and the Institute of Texan Cultures (San Antonio, TX 2013-2018).