ARTIST STATEMENT
The “Women Eating Flowers” series focuses on the interplay between beauty and violence within the context of desire. Flowers, symbols of beauty and purity, have historically been associated with the female body in art. The act of eating flowers symbolizes the violent nature of desire and the obsession with beauty. By depicting women consuming flowers in painting, I aim to question how desire has been visually encoded in the representation of women throughout art history and visual culture.
Expanding beyond traditional painting, I created a collage piece based on Dutch painter Margaret Haverman’s Flower Vase. Using cutouts from pornographic magazines, I reconstructed the vase, experimenting with composition, negative shapes, and various flesh tones. The representation of skin tones in these magazines is notably limited in diversity. These clear disparities highlight society’s shared preferences and the marginalization of varied skin tones in representation. By exploring the narratives within these images, the collage aims to convey human desire through form, process, and materials.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Jee Hwang’s works explore images of figure and objects from everyday life in painting. Observing individuals and people’s desire and relationships, Hwang produces realistic depictions of metaphorical scene in her paintings, which reflect her inner self and identity as an immigrant. Hwang received her MFA in painting from Pratt Institute and her BFA from Salisbury University in Salisbury, Maryland. She has been awarded residencies from the Wassaic Project, Vermont Studio Center, and an Emma Bee Bernstein Fellowship from A.I.R. Gallery. Hwang has actively participated in solo and group exhibitions at a diverse range of venues in New York, New Jersey, Los Angeles, and Seoul, Korea. Hwang is based in Kansas, teaching painting as an Associate Professor at Fort Hays State University.
© Jee Hwang