Join us for an Artist POV Tour of The Condition of Being Addressable with Young Joon Kwak.

Young Joon Kwak (they/them and she/her) is a LA-based multidisciplinary artist 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 of 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. They are lead performer in the electronic-dance-noise band Xina Xurner.

Kwak presented solo/two-person/collaborative exhibitions internationally at galleries and institutions including Arko Art Center, Seoul, South Korea (2022); Commonwealth & Council, LA (2021, 2017, 2016, 2014); Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (2018); and Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre, Alberta, Canada (2018). They performed at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2019); Art Museum of the National University of Colombia, Bogotá (2018); Hammer Museum, LA (2016); and The Broad, LA (2016). Selected group exhibitions have been held at Hauser & Wirth, New York (2021), Tufts University Art Galleries, Boston (2021); Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco (2019); and Le Pavillon Vendôme Centre d’Art Contemporain, Clichy, France (2016). 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).