BIO ʕ•ﻌ•ʔ

Christina Yuna Ko is a Korean American artist living and working in Queens, NY. Her work, grounded in painting and installation, attempts to reclaim the living visual language present in the Asian diasporic experience as a site of potential imaginaries. She received her BFA from Cornell University in 2013 and is currently in Columbia University’s MFA program. Selected exhibitions include: “Transformation Sequence”, Spring Break Art Fair, New York, NY; “Gathering”, Five Myles, Brooklyn, NY; "Étude for Some Place in Between", One River Gallery, Woodbury, NY; “Late Night Enterprise”, Perrotin, New York, NY; “Bathing in Public”, Selenas Mountain, Brooklyn, NY; “Night Scenes”, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Brooklyn, NY; “In Good Taste”, Dinner Gallery, New York, NY; “Internal Arrangements”, Trestle Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; and “Downloading Place”, Wave Hill, Bronx, NY. Her work has been featured in Apogee, Journal Artforum, FAD Magazine, FAR–NEAR, Gallery Gurls, Hyperallergic, Li Tang, The Fader magazine, and The Washington Post among others.

STATEMENT (つ˵•́ω•̀˵)つ━☆ﾟ.*･

Grounded within installation, painting and sculpture, my work demarcates a visual lexicon that reflects the cultural inheritance of Korean American experience. Situated within a Western context and entangled within cross-cultural histories, this lexicon becomes an amalgam of “cute culture”, imported cultural artifacts, generational practices, and domestic wares. By activating familial histories, media platforms, and Asian enclaves as rich sites of reference, I uncover visual connections across immigrant histories and the broader Asian diaspora.

By oscillating the work between object and image, I use installation to create a reimagined space that recontextualizes this uncovered aesthetic language and reiterates connections through arrangement. I use the palette and “flatness” of cute iconography, so that a fly swatter, stickers, and interior decor speak the same visual language. This references how cuteness as an aesthetic category proliferates in the daily life of the diaspora, prevalent in everything from pop culture to everyday necessities. Through recontextualizing, arranging, and reimagining, I seek to unearth the often invisible interconnections spanning from the personal to the geopolitical found within the domestic site.

Ultimately, I aim to reclaim the living language of the diasporic experience as a site of potential imaginaries and make visible the richness present in the persistent everyday practices that enable a community to survive.