Young Joon Kwak

Young Joon Kwak (6/22) (they/them and she/her) is a LA-based multi-disciplinary artist and educator whose work spans sculpture, performance, music, video, and community-based collaborations, creating connections that bridge communities across a wide variety of socio-cultural, institutional, and alternative art contexts. Through sculptural manipulations in the form, functionality, and materiality of objects, they question common modes of perception and bodily objectification, while posing alternative ways of viewing bodies “beyond the skin.” Kwak is the founder of Mutant Salon, a roving beauty salon/platform for collaborative performances and installations with their community of queer, trans, femme, POC artists and performers. She and Mutant Salon were LACE’s 2018 Summer Residency artists, creating the exhibition Cavernous. They are lead performer in the electronic-dance-noise band Xina Xurner.

Kwak presented solo and collaborative exhibitions and performances internationally at galleries and institutions including Arko Art Center, Seoul, South Korea (2022); Korean Cultural Center, LA (2021); Commonwealth & Council, LA (2021, 2017, 2016, 2014); Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre, Alberta, Canada (2018); the Art Museum of the National University of Colombia, Bogotá (2018); The Broad, LA (2016); and the Hammer Museum, LA (2016). Selected group exhibitions have been held at Hauser & Wirth, New York, NY (2021); Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, CA (2019); Antenna Space, Shanghai, China (2019); and Le Pavillon Vendôme Centre d’Art Contemporain, Clichy, France (2015). Kwak received the Korea Arts Foundation of America’s Award for the Visual Arts (2020), Rema Hort Mann Foundation’s Emerging Artist Grant (2018), Artist Community Engagement Grant (2016), and the Art Matters Grant (2016). Kwak received an MFA from the University of Southern California in 2014, an MA in Humanities from the University of Chicago in 2010, and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007.

In addition to LACE, Kwak serves on the board of the Feminist Center for Creative Work. Kwak taught and mentored at schools including California Institute of the Arts; School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s low-residency MFA program; University of California, Riverside; and University of California, San Diego. Kwak’s work has been reviewed and featured in Artforum, ARTnews, Artillery Magazine, BOMB Magazine, Hyperallergic, and LA Times, among others.