Description
ARTIST STATEMENT
In this collage drawing, I reinterpret Margaretha Haverman’s floral still life through adult magazine imagery. Reconstructing the composition from fragmented images of the female body, I examine how beauty, desire, power, and value are shaped through visual form.
Dutch floral still lifes arranged rare flowers and luxurious surfaces as images of abundance and refinement. Their beauty was tied to collecting, display, taste, status, and ownership. I see a parallel in adult magazines, where the female body is staged and circulated as an image to be looked at and desired.
By cutting and layering, I transform commercialized images of sex and the female body into floral forms. The work does not avoid the contradiction of making commodified images beautiful again. Rather, through that contradiction, it asks how flowers and women’s bodies have each been constructed as desirable images—objects shaped for looking, longing, and value.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Jee Hwang is a Korean American contemporary visual artist working with figurative, realistic imageries. She explores themes across identity, memory, and belonging through narratives, metaphors, and allegories. Her subjects, drawn from everyday life, people, and objects, focus on the interplay of inner worlds and ordinary experiences. Hwang earned her BFA from Salisbury University and her MFA from Pratt Institute. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across the U.S. and internationally, including New York, New Jersey, Los Angeles, Kansas, and Seoul. She was the Emma Bee Bernstein Fellow at A.I.R. Gallery in New York, where she held a solo exhibition, and she is represented by Accola Griefen Gallery in Brooklyn. Her artist residencies include the Vermont Studio Center, MASS MoCA, the Wassaic Project, ChaNorth, Vashon Artist Residency, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. She is an Associate Professor of Art at Grand Valley State University.
© Jee Hwang