معرفی
Young Joon Kwak (they/she) is a Los Angeles-based sculptor and performance artist serving as a President's Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Art at the University of California, Riverside. Their practice challenges representational boundaries through inventive strategies of masking and camouflage, generating new embodied connections while creating spaces for marginalized bodies to thrive.
Academic background includes:
- B.F.A, Studio, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
- M.A., Humanities, University of Chicago
- M.F.A, Art, University of Southern California
Research centers on contemporary sculpture and performance exploring trans embodiment through material innovation. Kwak's work integrates queer theory, social practice, and community collaboration—particularly via Mutant Salon—to reimagine bodily autonomy. Their methodology transforms everyday beauty practices into radical acts of resistance, examining how camouflage strategies enable survival and joy within oppressive systems.
Major awards include:
- UC President’s Post-Doctoral Fellowship (2024)
- Artadia Grant (2024)
- Trellis Art Fund Milestone Grant (2024)
- California Community Foundation Fellowship (2022)
- Korea Arts Foundation Artist Award (2020)
As a President's Fellow, Kwak develops 'Resistance Pleasure' under mentors Jennifer Doyle and Anna Betbeze, bridging studio practice with academic research. They lead Mutant Salon—a collective beauty space for QTPOC collaboration—and perform with Xina Xurner, using drag-electronic-dance to investigate sonic camouflage. Current solo exhibition 'RESISTERHOOD' runs at Leslie-Lohman Museum through July 2025.
Kwak directs Mutant Salon as a living research laboratory and serves on the board of Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE). Their internationally exhibited work appears in venues from Hauser & Wirth to Bogotá's National University Art Museum, consistently centering trans-fem-POC perspectives in contemporary discourse.
