Artist Statement

I’m an emerging artist who grew up in Mississauga and graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute with a Bachelor’s of Fine Art in Painting. I have since then lived and worked on both East & West coasts of the United States and currently reside in Toronto. I am an artist who explores various perspectives of contemporary celebrity culture through portraiture. I am fascinated and inspired by the music, aesthetic, dances, colors, flashing lights and personalities of these stars. However, at the same time I question: what is the cost of fame, glamour and appeal that are presented through this form of pop culture? What do they sacrifice in terms of being on the other side of the experience, by performing and creating music for the public and their fans? I focus on capturing more than just the expression of the person I’m depicting —I want to show their story, emotions and personality.

My main work consists of portrait paintings of K-pop celebrities in non-conventional environments; a mix between fantasy and reality, with a palette drawing from both pop chromatic and naturalistic colors, as well as a love for patterns. Greenery, plants and flowers are also commonly featured in my paintings. I’m fascinated by the beauty of flowers, amazed at the endless variation of plant species and intrigued by the language of flowers. I often research and use the meaning behind flowers to convey hidden messages in my artwork.

Previously, I focused on concepts of the searching for one’s ‘home’ in the form of landscape/environment paintings. During a time period where I got to live and travel to many different cities, ‘home’ was an important concept and feeling for me to grasp.  Formerly as a huge figure skating fan, I loved depicting competitive figure skaters of popular sports culture with silkscreen printmaking in a graphic, poster-like style. In recent years, I’ve been creating portraits of celebrities wearing sunglasses (including the geometric shapes created by the refraction of light), paired with the colourful spotlights illuminating the stage and the reverse balance of environments seen through the green room mirrors. Presently, ‘reflection’ is a theme commonly found in my artwork and studying K-pop-related digital content on various social media platforms is an ongoing subject I’ve been exploring.

As someone who is part of the generation where the use of social media has grown exponentially, the content has definitely influenced my artistic practice. My paintings showcase the continued positive impact that K-pop has over the world —which is part of the ongoing global phenomenon of the Korean/Hallyu Wave. As I’ve been continuously making art on the subject of K-pop over the years, I realize there must be a reason I’ve been so fascinated with the music and entertainment industry of a foreign country in a language I don’t speak. I realize there’s more to K-pop and Korean entertainment culture than merely the surface: the influence that K-pop has on the world currently proves that music transcends language and speaks in different ways to positively affect its audience, motivating people to either want to become like them, simply enjoy the music and dancing, or be inspired and want to create something from it —I belong to the last category.

However there are two sides to this: as much as the music and dances are appealing, it’s evident that only the highlight reels are shown in the endless scrolling feeds and the industry is selling an extremely unrealistic, idol-like image to fans. The issue is that it is very unhealthy for the younger generation of consumers to look at all the polished, airbrushed photos and think it’s real. With K-pop content, the photos uploaded on these platforms are heavily edited to make these stars look picture-perfect. Their pores are edited pixel by pixel to look flawless, their bodies are distorted to look “ideal”, edited to almost resemble Greek sculptures. Making the stars more appealing to the public and to their targeted audience generates more income for the entertainment companies. Thus, I think this is the problem with social media: it destroys people’s perception of reality and presents a utopian view of the world.

I’ve been interested and fascinated in South Korean entertainment for a long time and everything I’ve seen until now has been specifically curated towards its main audience, which are the fans. Whether through various forms of social media (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Reddit, Youtube), TV broadcasts, articles, music streaming sites or through the release of an album, a single, music video, concept video, behind the scenes, concert tours, interviews or photoshoots —it’s all been hyper edited for a certain group of viewers. Studying social media and the impacts of fame in relation to celebrity culture in my upcoming paintings will form a major part of developing my art practice. Usually K-pop stars are presented through the image that their company wants; however as an artist, I have the freedom of depicting them in a new context and be able to shed a light on the different sides of what is not shown in the highly edited and romanticized content presented to fans in the South Korean entertainment industry. Through developing and challenging how the media we see daily influences the art (performing, literary and visual) we consume, I inquire along with the viewer the different sides of South Korean celebrity culture in my artwork.

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The ideas for my work come from the several moments I get inspired by something or someone I see: a thought, lyrics, music videos, magazine photos, social media posts, TV/films/movies, current events, dreams, emotions, poetry/novels, performances, a scene in everyday life, something someone said, … and the list goes on. These concepts, thoughts and questions I have are then conveyed onto paper or canvas, transferred into an artistic—physical form.

GROUP EXHIBITIONS               

  • 2021 Inaugural Juried Exhibition, Art Gallery of Mississauga, 300 City Centre Drive, Mississauga, ON, Canada, September 28 – November 6, 2021

  • The Sketchbook Project Vol 15, The Brooklyn Art Library, 28 Frost Street, Brooklyn, NY, U.S.A // Traveling Exhibition, Permanent Collection, February 2020–

  • Postcard Perspectives, Artspace at Untitled, 1 NE 3rd St Oklahoma City, OK, U.S.A, November 16 – December 28, 2019

  • 2nd Annual All Women, J. Mane Gallery, Online Exhibition, August 19 – September 19, 2019

  • Open Book Show 6, Arion Press, 1802 Hays Street, San Francisco, CA, U.S.A, August 3– 24, 2019

  • Colors, J. Mane Gallery, Online Exhibition, December 1 – 31, 2018

  • Initial Impression: San Francisco Art Institute - Osaka University of Arts 2018 Print Exchange, Fort Mason Arts & Cultural Center, San Francisco, CA, U.S.A, February 16 – March 8, 2018 // Osaka University of Arts, Osaka, Japan, June 2018

  • BFA Exhibition, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA, U.S.A, May 13-18, 2018

  • SFAI Courtyard exhibition: Simulations, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA, U.S.A, March-April 2018

  • Open Book Show III, Bryant Street Studios, San Francisco, CA, U.S.A, March 2018

  • Fort Mason Campus Opening Spectacle Exhibition, Fort Mason Arts & Cultural Center San Francisco, CA, U.S.A, November 10-11, 2017

  • Internal (something), Diego Rivera Gallery, San Francisco, CA, U.S.A, September 3-9 2017

  • The Reaccreditation Show, Diego Rivera Gallery, San Francisco, CA, U.S.A, April 5-11 2015

  • Visual Arts Springfest, Cawthra Park S.S., Mississauga, ON, Canada, 2010-2014 (yearly)

Television/Broadcasts