ARTIST STATEMENT
Adjusting has been a big part of my work. I draw from my own move to the United States and confronting radically different cultures, languages, and social norms. The built identity obsolesces in the course of immigrating, navigating, and negotiating the unfamiliar and the different.
Figurative painting enables a way to confront lived struggles. I give shape using forms, gestures, objects, and ideas. The human body holds history, memories, and desires. This abyss, a deeply personal and internal topology, shapes both a person\’s expressions and desires. When moving to foreign places, one confronts several struggles in the present: the longing for relevance from an irrelevant past, the longing to competently express thoughts and desires, and the longing for a certain future, no longer imaginable. Further, the individual reckonings cascade down connected paths to collectives, communities, and societies.
Personal locality provides metaphoric vessels and perspectives. Locally found nature, ephemera, and culture provide rich sources of relevant meaning. Trees, houseplants, weeds, and tumbleweeds represent the native or the immigrant, the rooted and unrooted. Instead of collecting objects, I photograph performances by these subjects and translate these performances into drawings and paintings.
A giant tumbleweed blew onto campus on a windy day. I had never seen one in person. I brought it in my studio and immersed myself in its realities. A still performance was given and made into a painting.
My creative practice provides space to consider our bodies, hereness, where one belongs, and where true home might be.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Jee Hwang holds an MFA from Pratt Institute and a BFA from Salisbury University, and has exhibited widely across the U.S. and internationally, including Seoul. Her honors include the Emma Bee Bernstein Fellowship from A.I.R. Gallery, the Silver Award from the Salina Art Center Biennial, and a semi-finalist recognition for the Bethesda Painting Award. Hwang has completed residencies at Vermont Studio Center, MASS MoCA, and the Wassaic Project, among others. She is the Duisterhof Endowed Professor of Painting at Grand Valley State University and is represented by Accola Griefen Gallery in Brooklyn, NY.
© Jee Hwang