Young Joon Kwak

Young Joon Kwak (b. 1984 in Queens, NY) is a LA-based multi-disciplinary artist working primarily through sculpture, performance, and collaboration. Kwak’s work aims to transform our perception of bodies—from static and bound to pre-inscribed power structures, to an expanded sense of bodies and their environs as mutable and open-ended—by reimagining the form, functionality, and materiality of objects. Kwak is the founder of Mutant Salon, a roving beauty salon/platform for experimental performance collaborations with their community of queer, trans, femme, POC artists and performers. Kwak is the lead performer in the electronic-dance-noise band Xina Xurner. Performances and exhibitions include: the Hammer Museum, The Broad, REDCAT, ONE National LGBT Archives, and Commonwealth & Council, Los Angeles; 47 Canal, Regina Rex, and Smack Mellon, NYC; Wattis Institute, Southern Exposure, San Francisco; Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Antenna Space, Shanghai, China; Pavillon Vendôme Centre d’Art Contemporain, Clichy, France; the Art Museum of the National University of Colombia, Bogotá; and Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff, Alberta, Canada. Kwak (along with Mutant Salon) was Artist-in-Residence at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) during Summer 2018. Kwak received the Rema Hort Mann Foundation’s Emerging Artist Grant in 2018, and the Art Matters Grant in 2016. Kwak received an MFA from the University of Southern California, MA in Humanities from the University of Chicago, and BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Kwak’s work has been reviewed and featured in Artforum, ARTnews, Artillery Magazine, BOMB Magazine, Hyperallergic, and LA Times, among others.

Residency/Fellowship

3Arts Residency Fellowship

Website

youngjoon.com

Location

Los Angeles, CA USA