2018 HAMMER GRANT FINALIST

About Erica Cho, Finalist
As an experimental narrative filmmaker, I like to play with popular conventions in order to assert—in a non-didactic fashion—the vibrancy of underrepresented and queer communities. My aesthetic influences reflect a Korean American immigrant experience, a formal training in visual art, and formative roots in queer punk and feminist music subcultures. As a college student, deep in rural Pennsylvania, I made queer woodcuts and comics. In late '90s New York, I worked with performance artist Jess Dobkin. I then got an MFA from UC Irvine, where I studied experimental video. All in all, I’ve made 12 short experimental films, most recently, Golden Golden (2016), a Great Recession film featuring two broke San Bernardino 20-somethings who visit a Filipina healer. I live in Philly/Los Angeles and teach in UC San Diego's Visual Arts Department.