Homecoming
Curated by Young Jeon
“Never before have we been so afraid of human contact. Has there ever been a point in our lifetimes that we were given an opportunity to be more connected, more understanding, and more generous?”
Homecoming is a virtual group exhibition curated by AHL Foundation curatorial fellow Young Jeon. The exhibition features the work of eight female Korean artists from New York and Seoul. Artists included are Liz Ahn, Sanga Han, Annette Hur, Jisook Kim, Joeun Kim Aatchim, Sarah Lee, Jean Oh, and Kigin Yang.
Curator Young Jeon says, “Homecoming celebrates what we discover when we center our lives on our inner selves, exploring this process through the following four themes: nostalgic comfort, restless trauma, immersive reclusion, and therapeutic restoration. These themes encapsulate the eight artists’ experiences of returning to self in the face of emotional and psychological struggles. The featured works are labor-intensive, and they trace the trails of each artist’s immersive process as well as their intimate and continuous contact with their materials, and this process of artmaking becomes the means for therapeutic restoration.”
The exhibition is viewable virtually here. For more information please visit the event’s Instagram page.
About the Curator
Young Jeon is a curator, writer, and project manager. She holds a Master’s degree in Arts and Cultural Management from Pratt Institute in New York and dual Bachelor’s degrees in Arts and Design with a focus in Korean Art, and French Literature from Korea University in Seoul. Her academic, curatorial, and creative work focuses on Asian diaspora artists, Korean identity, gender, art education, and new media. She curated exhibitions and organized projects in both institutional-scale curatorial endeavors and cultural events. Young co-curated an Augmented Reality art exhibition, Ascension in Venice, Italy, and advised galleries as an art consultant at Spark Art Management, New York. She also advised ACAW (Asia Contemporary Art Week) on curatorial programming and worked with leading institutions and international artists in the United States and Asia. She supported production and PR for art fairs such as Armory Show, and UNTITLED, Art Miami Beach while serving as the content curator-organizer for KANA (Korean Association of New York Artists). Young has significantly contributed to the curatorial department at Brooklyn Museum’s overhaul of Asian Art galleries, Songeun Art Space and Sungkok Art Museum in Seoul. Her written work, interviews, and essays have been published in Public Art Magazine, Zer01ne, Critic-al and Art Triangle. She is currently the Associate Director for SPACE 776, Correspondent Writer for Public Art Magazine.
For more information on Young Jeon visit their website at http://www.yjeon.com/about or follow them on Instagram.
Sanga Han (b. 1987, Seoul, South Korea) is a Seoul based artist who earned her BFA and MFA in Oriental Painting from Hongik University, South Korea. Han’s poetic but visually strong artworks were shown in various art institutions such as Seoul Calligraphy Art Museum(2014), Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Ansan (2016), and Unité d’Habitation, France (2017). She has participated in major art events including Asia Culture Center and Sulhwa Cultural Exhibition, which took place in the Sulhwasoo Flagship Store Seoul. In recognition of the excellence of her works, she has received numerous awards including Seongnam Arts Center Selecting of Artist-Grand Prize in 2012 and Emerging Artist Award from Gyeonggi Cultural Foundation in 2017 and Seoul Cultural Foundation in 2019.
For more information on Sanga Han visit their website at https://www.hansanga.com/or follow them on Instagram.
Jisook Kim (b. 1981, Incheon, South Korea) expresses her inner world through her sculptural installations as well as drawings using marbling patterns. She works and lives in New York City. She received a BFA and an MFA in sculpture from SungShin Women’s University in Seoul, Korea. Her sculptures, drawings, and installations have been exhibited extensively in Korea and in the United States. Selected exhibitions include Built Emotions at Gallery Sensei, New York; Emotions at Nabi Museum, New Jersey; Hello My Friends at Alternative Space Noon, Korea; the 10th Annual Governors Island Art Fair, New York; Affordable Art Fair, New York; and the 4th Community Art Project at Flushing Town Hall, Queens, NY. She is also the winner of the 39th Incheon Art Contest, Korea.
For more information on Jisook Kim visit their website at https://artistjisookkim.weebly.com/artwork.html or follow them on Instagram.
Jean Oh (b. 1993, Seoul, South Korea) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Her work provides a base for the viewers to experience their sensitive and emotional states. That is, the repetitive irritation and unavoidable inconveniences in our lives that are too small to avoid, yet too big to ignore. She holds a BFA from MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art) and an MFA from Pratt Institute. Oh has been featured in Saatchi Art’s Rising Stars Report 2019. She also has been selected as the winner of the Silver Award for AHL-T&W Foundation Contemporary Visual Art Awards. Her work was presented by numerous group shows in the USA: 2019 11th Annual Juried Art Show (Riverviews Artspace, Lynchburg, VA); 2018 Small Work 2018 (Trestle Gallery Brooklyn, NY); and Concept 2018 (CICA Museum, Gimpo, South Korea.)
For more information on Jan Oh visit their website at http://www.ohjean.com/ or follow them on Instagram.
Annette Hur (b. 1984, Seoul, South Korea) lives and works in New York. She received her MFA from Columbia University in 2019; her BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015; and her BA from Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South Korea in 2008. She creates visual narratives around objecthood of the female individual, taking her stride of inner confidence to destroy the false nature of inherited traditional culture. By working with abstraction through large scale oil paintings and Korean silk textiles, Hur explores the universality of gendered ideologies that subconsciously manipulates and subverts socio-sexual identities and how societal projections are embedded in our body and mind.
For more information on Annette Hur visit their website at https://www.a-hur.com/ or follow them on Instagram.
Kigin Yang (b. 1988, Seoul, South Korea) received her BFA and MFA from Seoul National University. She was a selected rising artist at Gyeong-Gi Cultural Foundation in South Korea(2018) and also a selected artist at Soma Art Museum Drawing Center, Seoul(2017). She presented her work at Sueno 339, Space of art in Seoul and she held her solo exhibition, The layers of a profound abyss at Emu Art Space Seoul(2017). Also, She had her group exhibition, Near, Far, Confused at project space Igloo in New York(2019). She currently lives and works in New York.
For more information on Kigin Yang visit their website at https://cargocollective.com/kiginyang/C-V or follow them on Instagram.
Sarah Lee (b. 1988, Seoul, South Korea) lives and works in New York City. Lee received her BFA and MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Recent solo exhibitions include Unoriginal Sublime, The Mission, Chicago (2017) and Playing the Field, The Won Gallery, Seoul, Korea (2014). She has participated in many group exhibitions, among them Silent Night, Artnutri, Taiwan, (2019); Falling Through ‘n’ Going After, One Eyed, New York, (2019); Control & Contrast, The Mission, Chicago, (2017), Presence Interrupted, Julius Caesar, Chicago, (2017). Lee also participated in EXPO Chicago in 2017 and Art Taipei in 2018, 2019. Lee is featured in New American Painting, Knack magazine and ChaioxArt.
For more information on Sarah Lee visit their website at http://www.sulhwalee.com/new-page or follow them on Instagram.
Liz Ahn (b. 1993, Los Angeles, CA) uses painting and sculpture to explore the futility of language and communicational exchange. She uses domestic symbols and objects to investigate the psychology of anxiety, humor, and relationships in the space of daily life. Ahn has exhibited in Los Angeles and New York in group shows organized by her peers. She has had solo shows with BozoMag and Visitor Welcome Center in Los Angeles, California. Born in Los Angeles, Ahn received an MFA from Columbia University and a BA from UCLA. She lives and works in New York City.
For more information on Liz Ahn visit their website at http://lizahn.net/ or follow them on Instagram.
Joeun Kim AATCHIM (b. 1989, South Korea) crafts contemporary relics and stage audiovisual installations with various archaic crafts and stagecraft—in search of transparency in vision and voice. Her current focus is mastering Korean Minhwa, a two-century-old painting method with mineral pigment on paper and silk. AATCHIM’s projects have shown internationally, namely at SBC Galerie d’art Contemporain in Montréal, Long March Space in Beijing, and 80 WSE Gallery, The Jewish Museum in New York. Her public program at The Drawing Center was granted by Foundation for the Contemporary Arts. She was invited to Nida Art Colony in Lithuania (2015), Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture (2017), Open Sessions at The Drawing Center (2018-20), Triangle Art Association (2021), and LowRes Jerusalem, Israel. (2021) She completed her Visual Art education at New York University (BFA ‘14) and Columbia University. (MFA ’17)
For more information on Joeun Kin AATCHIUM visit their website at https://www.joeun-aatchim.com/ or follow them on Instagram.
About AHL Foundation
The AHL Foundation is a non-profit organization formed in 2003 by Sook Nyu Lee Kim to support Korean artists living in the United States and to promote exposure of their work in today’s highly competitive contemporary art world. In 2004, the foundation established an annual competition that is open to all artists of Korean ancestry living in the United States. AHL awards four monetary prizes each year and has been mounting bi-annual exhibitions to display the winning works. Since 2008, AHL has advanced to an annual exhibition and broadened their scope of diversity and opportunity. In addition to nurturing Korean art in the US, AHL Foundation is committed to educating the public and invigorating the Korean community, one of the largest ethnic groups in New York City, through art history courses offered in the Korean language, special lectures given by respected art professionals, artist studio visits, field trips to museums and galleries, and workshops for artists and general audiences.
