MEET YOUNG JOON KWAK
“I love to look at and talk about art rooted in fresh queer, trans, feminist perspectives and I love collaborating with others to imagine new worlds.”
Young Joon Kwak, courtesy of the artist
Young Joon Kwak (they/she; b. 1984, Queens, New York; lives and works in Los Angeles) is a sculptor and performance artist whose work challenges the boundaries of representation through innovative techniques of masking and camouflage. Their art generates new, tangible forms of connection and interaction with others that go beyond traditional categories of gender and race, while vividly imagining new spaces for marginalized bodies to thrive. They are the founder of Mutant Salon, a dynamic queer-transfem-BIPOC collective beauty salon and collaborative art and performance platform. They also electrify audiences as the lead performer of the drag-electronic-dance-noise band Xina Xurner. Their work has been widely exhibited at galleries and museums internationally, including at the Hammer Museum’s biennial exhibition Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living. Their next solo exhibition Resistance Pleasure opens at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in August 2024, with another major exhibition following at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art in New York in 2025.
Work
Installation view, Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2023). Courtesy of the Hammer Museum. Photo: Charles White
Installation View of Hermy (2017), Commonwealth & Council
Objects of Pleasure (2022), collaboration with Gala Porras-Kim
mentor profile
Queer|Art|Mentorship will be accepting applications from emerging artists across the country. Are you open to working with someone remotely, or would you prefer they are based in the same city as you?
“Open.”
What interests you about mentoring?
“What draws me to mentoring is the chance to offer the support and encouragement that I craved and found later during my own artistic journey. I love to look at and talk about art rooted in fresh queer, trans, feminist perspectives and I love collaborating with others to imagine new worlds.”
Given your experience and interests, what kind of emerging artist do you feel best positioned to support?
“Deviant thinkers and practitioners working across the visual and performing arts.”
As a mentor, what would you like to offer an emerging artist? What would you like to receive?
“I can offer my experiences and knowledge of language, theory, and a queer artistic canon along with individualized support, advice, and encouragement. We can discuss tactics of political dissent, queer/trans embodiment, and exchange makeup tips–I’m open to learning new things. Together, we’ll further define what this mentorship looks like in a way that works for both of us.”
Have you had mentors of your own? Who have they been?
“I recognize many mentors, but to name a few–artist A.L. Steiner, Young Chung, Gala Porras-Kim, Jennifer Moon, Julie Tolentino and many of my peers at my gallery Commonwealth and Council, and Lauren Berlant. I’m blessed to have a large circle of chosen sisters—other artists, performers, cultural organizers, and thinkers. We’ve formed a reciprocal bond of teaching, supporting, guiding, and loving on each other in ways that makes this world a place where we can not just survive, but shine together.”