2020 Artist Fellowship
Jayoung Yoon
Yi Sa-Ra
Sungjae Lee
Mookwon Han
Properties of...February 22, 2021 - April 30, 2021
*Best viewed on desktop
Jayoung Yoon
Yi Sa-Ra
Sungjae Lee
Mookwon Han
Curated by Hitomi Iwasaki and Dahye Kim Organized by
Sponsored by
“Air, I should explain, becomes wind when it is agitated.”
- Lucretius, On the Nature of Things
The exhibition is titled “Properties of…”. It refers to the notion that artists do not create things that are new to us, but their art engages properties of the world and our lives to make them newly visible and tangible. Odor or temperature of personal situations, weight or complexity of collective sentiments, or color, volume, and sound of things exist in between of every being that composes the world. The artists in the exhibition, the recipients of 2020 AHL Foundation Artist Fellowship, Mookwon Han, Sungjae Lee, Yi Sa-Ra, and Jayoung Yoon, would do just so by each occupying unique space and with their highly authentic visions and approaches. They agitate the properties of their choosing. They present the world to us.
Jayoung Yoon
Jayoung Yoon is an interdisciplinary artist using Human Hair as a medium. Select exhibitions include Bronx Museum of the Arts, NY; San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles, CA; Hudson Valley Museum of Contemporary Art, NY; New Bedford Art Museum, MA; Ohio Craft Museum, OH; Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, DE; Here Arts Center, NY; Coreana Museum of Art, Korea and Seoul Olympic Museum of Art, Korea.
She was awarded the Ora Schneider Regional Residency Grant, the BRIC Media Arts fellowship, and the Franklin Furnace Fund. She has attended residencies at The MacDowell Colony, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Swing space, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Sculpture Space, Vermont Studio Center, I-Park, and Saltonstall Foundation, among others. Her work has appeared in various publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Hyperallergic, Gothamist, Artnet News, Surface Design Journal, and Fiber Art Now. My work draws upon the mind-matter phenomenon, exploring our memory, perception and bodily sensations. The primary medium in my work is human hair, a material that is
intimately corporeal, tactile, and focuses the viewer’s attention on the body. Hair is also an especially appropriate symbol of remembrance, since it doesn’t decay until long after death.
The insubstantial strands of hair are woven into semi-transparent sculptural forms representing thoughts and memories. These pieces are frequently used in my video and performance works. Also, I weave strands of hair into weightless sculptures and installations that move as the result of airflow in the room and respond to the viewer’s movement. These small movements in space, on an intricate scale, shift the viewer’s awareness of their surroundings and introduce subtle perceptions that are often taken for granted.
In my two-dimensional works, individual strands of hair are placed within layers of acrylic medium and beeswax. Pared down to their most reductive elements, these works provide a space where structure fades away into the painted ether, representing thoughts dissolving or surfacing between states of the conscious and subconscious mind.
Infinite Inner and Outer Space, 2016 Artist's hair, 5½"h x 5½"w x 14"d
Infinite Inner and Outer Space, 2016 Artist's hair, 5½"h x 5½"w x 14"d
Web of Life, 2015
Artist's and artist family's hair, urethane resin, 9x9ft
Web of Life, 2015
Artist's and artist family's hair, urethane resin, 9x9ft
Yi Sa-Ra
Yi Sa-Ra (born Seoul, South Korea) received an MFA at Columbia University School of the Arts (2020) and a BFA with honors from the Rhode Island School of Design (2011). She also received the Ellen Battell Stoeckel Fellowship to attend the Yale Summer School of Art and Music in Norfolk (2010). Yi has won awards and fellowships from the AHL Foundation in New York and the JoongAng Ilbo Culture Media in Seoul. Her work has been exhibited and screened in venues including Wallach Art Gallery, Lenfest Center for the Arts, New York (2019), Insa Art Space, Seoul (2017), Weekend, Seoul (2017), CHAPTER II, Seoul (2016), Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale, Tokamachi, Japan (2015), Hangaram Art Museum, Seoul (2013) and Roger Williams National Memorial, Providence (2011). My work navigates shifting perspectives around personal experiences, defining their place in our societal moment. Addressing issues both intimate and societal, I produce videos and films about memory, trauma, agency and relationships. My current video trilogy consists of short films told from the perspective of temporary female immigrants. As the characters are confronted with the difficulties of immigration, unemployment, and alienation, the work details the psychological effects brought upon by the current economic landscape in the U.S. The first video in the trilogy is “Clinch,” which portrays an intergenerational, inter-Korean conflict between landlady and tenant who share a small NYC apartment. Engaging both characters’ fear of displacement, the short film reveals the tension between them through a series of domestic still lifes. Following up on this work, I have produced a new short film, “when stretched too thin.” This work follows Dana, a fictional character played by Chuja Seo, who has moved to NYC from South Korea as she secretly records her job interviews. Through recordings of actual job interviews, narration, and the layered sounds of the city, the character discloses her most intimate thoughts while acting out a silent rebellion.
when stretched too thin, 2020–2021
Single-channel video (HD video, color, sound), 14:28 min
Clinch, 2019
Installation view
Clinch, 2019
Installation view
Clinch, 2019
Single-channel video (HD video, color, sound), 8:53 min
Sungjae Lee
SUNGJAE LEE is from Seoul, South Korea. He is currently living and working between Seoul and Chicago, IL. He received his B.F.A. in Sculpture from Seoul National University in 2014. During his study, he found himself more interested in immaterial and time-based mediums (e.g. performance, installation, text, sound, and video) with the aim of visualizing marginalized groups through his body of work. To develop his practice as a professional performance artist, he pursued his M.F.A. in Performance Art at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2017. Throughout 3 years of stay in the States, his practice has delved into the visibility and representation of queer Asians and their desires in the West. He has presented his works globally in Korea, Sweden, Canada, New Zealand, and the US. His performance pieces were shown in "Emergency INDEX" published by Ugly Duckling Press and "A Research on Feminist Art Now" by No New Work.
As a queer Asian, I am critical of dominant expressions of masculinity centering around muscular, white men. My lack of these characteristics and their dominance in Western culture led Caucasian men to become for me a fantasy of desire and visibility. I am, however, critical of my internalized whiteness and its relevance to the widening hierarchical gap for Asian men, who are in the West regarded as effeminate, desexualized, and thus invisible. Resistance against socially constructed gender stereotypes manifests as tension, exhaustion, and invisibility in many people’s day to day life, including my own. How do we begin to develop sexuality in conjunction to race? Is it possible to desire beyond traps of race relations? How can my bodily experience and sexual fetish remain in dialogue with the visibility of the queer Asian diaspora? It is through these questions that I construct idealized figures with clay, human hair, and narratives illustrating my own history, memory, and emotional past, in order to present new forms of masculinity.
Whiteyellowhite, 2019
durational performance with installation (1h), documentation video (7m 57s),16 panels (8 texts printed on transparent film and 8 images, 40”x63” each), a full-sized mirror, a table, a bucket filled with white clay, a mic with speakers, size variable (installed size in the video: 15'4"x15'4"x78")
Whiteyellowhite, 2019
Photo ⓒ Ji Yang Whiteyellowhite illustrates eight emotions (joy, fear, trust, surprise, anticipation, anger, disgust, and sadness) that I have as a queer Asian toward the word, white. Activation of a room-like installation space starts when I detach an episode-printed film, display it on a mirror, and read it out along with gestures. The activation continues episode by episode as the installation slowly opens up and reveals a more visible view of my body covered with white clay, yellow pigment, sushi grasses, and human hair to the audience.
Untitled (Men I Have Ever Met), 2020
audience participatory performance, until the prepared 90 lightbulbs are consumed (about 4h), 90 episodes describing men I have met, 2 lightbulb cords, 90 lightbulbs, 2 mics, a pair of headphones
This activation of my on-going text work Men I Have Ever Met is inspired by Felix Gonzalez Torres’s light bulb installation series, Korean performance artist Hee Ran Lee’s light bulb-throwing piece 50 Bulbs, and ASMR (Autonomous Sensorial Meridian Response) artists' whispering. A participant is asked to hold a lightbulb and while listening to stories about men I have ever met and to swing it to the other lightbulb I hold after, through which I explore how interpersonal relationships form and shift with the performance of small gestures. Story No. 19 Story No. 26 Story No. 42 Story No. 56
Mookwon Han
Mookwon Han resides in NY and strives to spread saving the environment through video installation. Han has had solo shows at Choi&Lager Gallery Seoul, Kumho Museum, Doosan Gallery NY, CUE Art Foundation, and KyungIn Museum. Han’s work included in group exhibitions at Seongnam Art Center, Seongnam; NY Media Center; The Fondazione Filiberto Menna, Salerno, Italy; Galeria U Jezuitow, Poznan, Poland; Bund18 Creative Center, Shanghai, China; Space C, Coreana Museum, Seoul, Korea; Nation Centre for Performing Art, Asia Society Mumbai Centre, Mumbai, India; Metropolitan Pavilion, NY; David Zwirner Gallery, NY; Miyako Yoshinaga Gallery/ Asia Society Museum NYC; Unit B Gallery, San Antonio: Hoam Gallery and National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul. Han received an MFA from the School of Visual Arts NYC and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting Sculpture(John Whitney Payson Fellowship). Han participated in residencies at Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Seoul Foundation for Art and Culture, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Program and Swingspace Governors Island, Art OMI, and CUE Art Foundation. He was awarded a Korea Hydro Nuclear Power Co Grant, Gyeongju Cultural Foundation Grant, Puffin Foundation Grant, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and AHL Foundation Fellowship. The ongoing record of my efforts in developing an avant-garde orchestra inspired by my visits to several power plants. This project began by observing the use of purified air and water, philosophical ideals, in the process of making electricity in power plants. I raise and lower the crystal chandelier, armed with icicles made of purified water, to beat the drum below – emulating a sailor raising my anchor to set sail toward Thomas More’s Utopia. In the meantime, a tank full of purified air is pumped into the trumpet.
Growing up with a lot of interest in the nuclear power plants near my hometown of Gyeongju, I explore the dependence of modern society on electricity, and their near hypocritical disdain towards power plants. Just as the massive, imposing power plants produce invisible electricity, as the artistic energetic, forceful motions lead to the invisible, yet resounding sounds of the drum and trumpet. The importance ascribed to the purity of air and water used in the works further establishes my intention to express gratitude for power plants and nature, and for their continued sacrifice for the sake of men.
Drum, 2019 uhd video, 1:13 (total 18:20)
Score of “Counterstrike of Stones”, 2019 uhd video, 0:36 (total 3:08)
Drum with Iced Pure Water, 2019
mixed media, 62 x 72 x 130 inch
Score from ‘Counterstrike of Stones’, 2019
color print 48 x 32 inch
Learn more about the process and concepts behind these works from the artists themselves.
Curator, Hitomi IwasakiHitomi Iwasaki, Director of Exhibitions/Curator, joined the Queens Museum in 1996 and has worked on numerous landmark exhibitions, including Cai Guo-Qiang (1997), Out of India: Contemporary Indian Art from Diaspora (1997), and Global Conceptualism (1999) and initiated site-specific artist projects that later developed into longer-term residency and fellowship programs. As Director of Exhibitions, she organized Caribbean: Crossroad of the World (2012) in collaboration with El Museo del Barrio and The Studio Museum in Harlem and Bringing the World into the World (2015), large-scale international contemporary art exhibition celebrating the Museum's The Panorama of the City of New York–a 9,000 sq.ft. scale model of the metropolis made in 1964 for the New York World's Fair. Her work continues to focus on conceptually driven site-specific artist projects with a ranging body of local and international artists including Terence Gower, Nic Hess, Duke Riley, Johanna Unzueta, and Jewyo Rhii. In addition to Patty Chang: The Wandering Lake (2017), she has worked on numerous artist solo-projects including Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Mariam Ghani, Anna K. E., Ronny Quevedo, Julia Weist and Sable Elyse Smith. Iwasaki is a recipient of the International Association of Art Critic’s IACA Curator’s Award Best Project in a Public Space, 2009–2010, and her most recent publications include The Panorama Handbook: Thoughts and Visions On and Around the Queens Museum's Panorama of the City of New York (2018).
Curator, Dahye Kim Dahye Kim is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher, curator, and college educator.
Her artwork utilizes computer software, sound, and light to create the video installation, which explores the idea of the real and unreal intertwining memory, dream, and phantasm. She has presented her research and curriculum at national conferences and symposiums, including Foundations in Art, Theory and Education (FATE), College Art Association (CAA), and Art Education Research Institute (AERI). In addition to teaching and research, she has curated diverse themes of contemporary exhibitions and art/educational events, including the exhibition/symposium: “Constructing A Praxis of Artist/Educator” at Columbia University.
