ARTIST STATEMENT
My work engages with memory, identity, and emotion through the language of abstraction. As a Korean American artist based in New York City, I draw upon both cultural heritage and personal experience, navigating tensions between visibility and invisibility, tradition and individuality.
Working on unprimed canvas with acrylic, I build translucent layers of color that shift between softness and intensity. Lines and geometric structures emerge in conversation, while the recent incorporation of colored sand introduces texture and sculptural presence. This element grounds the otherwise ethereal qualities of paint, creating a dynamic interplay between surface and depth, vision and touch.
Central to my practice is the concept of partial visibility, reflecting the interplay of multiple identities—between Korea and America, tradition and modernity, design and fine art. This theme is further shaped by the quiet resilience of women in Korean culture, particularly my mother. Her recollections of growing up in a silk-farming village remain vivid: dyed silk suspended from mulberry trees, fluttering like memory in the wind. When she observed that my paintings recalled this landscape, I came to recognize how profoundly my work is shaped by inherited memory.
Ultimately, my paintings serve as meditations on duality—presence and absence, softness and strength, form and feeling. At the same time, they are acts of claiming space, honoring lineage, and giving voice to quiet narratives that persist across generations.
Christine Kwon is a Korean-American artist based in New York City. Born and raised in South
Korea, she immigrated to the United States at the age of sixteen. Her journey eventually brought
her to New York, where she immersed herself in its vibrant cultural and artistic community while
pursuing higher education.
institutions and retail clients. Throughout this time, she remained committed to painting, her first
creative passion. What began as a parallel pursuit gradually became the center of her practice,
leading her to devote herself fully to abstract painting.
and personal experience. Working on unprimed canvas with acrylic and colored sand, she creates
layered compositions that shift between softness and intensity, surface and depth. Her practice is
deeply informed by inherited memory, particularly her mother’s recollections of growing up in a
Korean silk-farming village—a narrative that continues to shape her exploration of visibility,
tradition, and resilience.
master’s degrees in Sustainability and Real Estate Development from the Fashion Institute of
Technology and the University of Miami. She is currently studying abstract painting at the Art
Students League of New York under the mentorship of James Little and Larry Poons.