Organizer: Three Shadows Photography Art Centre
Suppoter: Embassy of The United States in Beijing
Curator: Nik Apostolides
CYJO (born 1974) is a visual artist that works mainly in the photographicmedium but also with text and video. As an American of Korean ethnicity, CYJO analyzes different cultural nuances and sometimes contradicting perspectives within her body of work. She continues to explore how culture, life experience, tradition and modernity shape both the individual and collective identity and how society influences the alteration of tradition and culture.
She will be discussing Mixed Blood, a photographic and textual project portraying NYC and Beijing based families that include children with “mixed”races, ethnicities, and cultures. Mixed Blood questions and diffuses the historical categorization process of race/ethnicity and focuses on connective, cross-cultural experiences. The portraits and accompanying narrative sillustrate the varying relationships family members have with their backgrounds, cultural context and citizenship. This unifying of race and cultures within a family unit continues to influence the evolution of American and global identity today. Other works that focus on identity will be shared to further illustrate her approach. Both abstract and formal portraiture of people, culture and place with the influence of domestic and international migration are encapsulated in her body of work.
CYJO’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including: The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C., Asia Society Texas Center, Houston, JANM Museum, Los Angeles, Venice Architecture Biennale, Venice, TodayArt Museum, Beijing, T. Art Center, Beijing, Liang Dian Design Center, Beijing,China Millennium Monument Museum of Digital Arts, Beijing, CFCCA, Manchester,The Art Atrium, London and The Korea Society, New York. Her work has been featured in numerous publications and broadcast including A+A Magazine, La Repubblica, Slate, Conveyor Magazine, Stern, Daily Mail, NBC, ELLE Korea, Eloquence Magazine, Global Times, Loeil De La Photographie, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Smithsonian Magazine, The New York Times, Vision Magazine, CBS News and PBS Sunday Arts News. She has lectured at The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Asia Society Texas Center Museum, The Korea Society, Miami University, San Francisco State University, Today ArtMuseum, Overseas Korean Foundation and The Ruben Museum of Art.