Christina Yuna Ko

Christina Yuna Ko is a Korean American artist living and working in Queens, NY. She received her BFA from Cornell University in 2013, and has since then shown her work in Los Angeles, CA, Washington D.C., and in NYC. Selected exhibitions include: “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; “Futures Ever Arriving”, Chelsea Market, New York, NY; “Internal Arrangements”, Trestle Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; and “Downloading Place”, Wave Hill, Bronx, NY. Her work has been featured in Artforum, Gallery Gurls, the Arcade Project Zine, Hiss Magazine, The Fader magazine, The Washington Post, and Ballpit Magazine.

I attempt to demarcate the visual lexicon rooted in daily life, specifically one that reflects the cultural inheritance of the Asian 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 goods. Using vernacular drawing from everyday and domestic sites, I aim to uncover shared visual connections across immigrant histories and the broader Asian diasporic experience.

Specifically, I examine memories, online platforms, Asian enclaves, and shared histories as sites of reference. I reimagine archival imagery, cultural products, language fragments and everyday objects, activating the home and the community as rich reference sites. Oscillating between object and image, the work takes on the forms of this uncovered language. Carried within this work is a pursuit to reclaim this living everyday language, which is rich, beautiful and complex.