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: “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.   

Hi Christina! Thanks for joining me for Mint Tea. To begin, what’s your favorite tea? If you don’t drink tea, what kind of coffee or drink do you enjoy the most?

For tea, I really like nutty tea. I really like barley tea, or hojicha, or oksusu-suyeom-cha, which is corn husk tea. Anything that's very grainy and nutty in flavor.

Could you tell me about your background and your practice?

Sure, I can start way back. I was born in Flushing, and I grew up in New Jersey, and then went to school in Upstate New York, and now I'm back in Queens, New York. So it's very in this Tri-State area. I really have not gone very far, like just circling around this area. But I think that has really fed into my current practice where I do think a lot about immigrant histories and cultural inheritance. Particularly, I think, in this region, it's very common to find people who are second generation more so than third, fourth or fifth generation. So being in this area, I think I very much learned a lot about cultural practices from that direct generation that immigrated here. I think that has tied into my current arts practice now, where I focus a lot on trying to uncover the aesthetics that are embedded within the daily life practices, customs and rituals that are found in the home, and then the extensions of the home which end up being these community-based spaces that take on the role.

For example, I had a show that was about the Korean public bath house, because it I sort of envisioned it as this quasi-private public space. Because it's an extension of your bathroom, but it's shared with strangers at the same time, and it has its own sort of language to it. So I think a lot of my work is thinking about this language, where it comes from, how it’s translated between generations, how it shifts and changes as we live in this environment that's not isolated in terms of culture, and that’s not homogenous in terms of one singular culture dominating everything. It feels like, when you're here, you're sort of exposed to a bunch of things, drawn to a bunch of things at the same time, and they all build up into your identity. And I think that has really shaped my current practice – specifically being raised in New Jersey, which has so many enclave Korean neighborhoods, but then also being exposed since I was very young to New York City, because my parents would commute to the city. I really liked Japanese animation and things, so they would take me to Chinatown to buy Pokemon cards and anime posters and all of this stuff. So that kind of exposure I think really shifted the language that I became interested in. And so my current arts practice is creating paintings, sculptures, and installations around this language and trying to uncover it.

I think my practice has shifted more into installation. I think at the core of all the work that I do is painting. I think quite often that the foundation of everything I do is painting, because the image is so important to me, and the painterly quality of the things that I create is so important to me. But at the same time, I think because I create object-based work, or all the paintings are cut out and shaped into these object forms and reflect things that exist in reality, they need to be installed. The installation is just a part of the nature of these things, so they're sort of intertwined.

What projects are you working on right now?

Well, I started becoming very interested in windows, doors, and curtains, these things that are sort of at the boundary between one space and another. And they're also at the same time things themselves, like they’re physical things, but at the same time, they often symbolize transition from one space to another. So I've been working on a series of work that looks at windows and builds up windows, and doors and curtains and things like that, in a way that sort of immediately situates you into a space. Particularly I'm interested in domestic spaces, so I like to think of them being a window to outside rather than them being a window to inside, but at the same time, sort of revealing a few hints as to where you might be – inside. I've been trying to build up windows and then the objects that would surround them to situate you inside of an installation. I collected a couple of fabric pieces and things like that to work on. I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to use it. I've been exploring embroidery and sewing things physically onto it, but I've been really interested in lace curtains and very floral curtains, I think floral design, it's such an interesting thing to me, because it's so present in domestic spaces. It's so present that you just sort of don't notice them anymore. It's so mundane, for example, even in spoons and chopsticks and things like that, they'll be etched with some sort of design of floral patterns and things like that. I just find it very interesting where that sort of natural artifice exists. So I've been looking at very lacy curtains, and I think I'm going to make some sort of embroidered piece with them. Whenever I'm out, particularly in enclave neighborhoods, I always like to go to home goods stores or even supermarkets where there's all of these home furnishing products and things. I'm always in that section, looking for stuff.

I am the most familiar with your painted sculptures and installations. Can you talk about how and why you choose to work with the media that you do?

Sure. I think for a really long time, I've been collecting this primarily digital archive of all sorts of imagery, like screenshots from social media, Tumblr images, emoticons that I've saved from now defunct messaging systems. I used to have MSN Messenger and I used to have all these cute Korean emoticons. Before Gmail changed all of their emoticons to that sort of 3-D vibe, they used to have really cute, pixelated emoticons, so I have a bunch of those saved up. And I used to be really into Cyworld’s mini-rooms store, where they had all of this pixel art furniture and interior spaces, and I used to collect all of these things. So for a long time, I sort of wondered what the best way to interpret it and think about this kind of archival imagery was. I had experimented with a rectangular canvas and sort of thinking of it as the digital screen, and then these things sitting on that digital screen. But I think for me, what those objects did, what those digital images did was create a world – it was all about worldbuilding in a lot of ways. For me, it was really important to make those things physical, and somewhere in between an image and reality. Sort of like a theater, where it's not the real thing, but it's close enough that you're building this world around it where people live and interact with these things. So I think that's how I sort of shifted entirely into creating these shaped paintings and these object-like sculptural paintings, and then installing them inside of the space.

I see that a lot of your works are acrylic paintings on plywood or manufactured wood panels. Do you consider your works paintings or sculptures, or are they both? How did you begin painting primarily on plywood?

I think of them as primarily painting, but sculpture-like painting where they sort of ride the line between sculpture and painting, because the sides are painted, and they are shaped to reflect an object at the same time. So I haven't been able to definitively say one or the other. They’re somewhere in between, but I do think it's more like painting, but not quite just a painting is what I would say. I started painting on wood because I really liked how smooth wood panel is compared to canvas. Because everything I do is super flat, the canvas grain started to bother me a little bit, and I could do a lot of stuff to make it smoother but it felt like it wasn't worth the effort to do that on canvas. I also can't exactly shape canvas like objects easily. I used to cut out a wood panel and then stretch canvas over it, but even then, the lines on the side, all of that was not as smooth as I wanted it to be. So I just entirely shifted to wood because wood gives you that very smooth edge and very smooth surface. I use a combination of scroll saw and band saw. The scroll saw has this extremely thin blade. It looks like a sewing needle, if you look at how thin that saw is. It's able to make super clean cuts, and you can also do turns that are not possible on any other kind of saw, because it's so thin.

What is your creative process like? Do you start your work with a specific concept in mind from the beginning or does it evolve organically as you go?

I think it's like a combination of both. Like, sometimes I'll see something and I really want to make a work about it. I primarily work in Illustrator – I do a sketch in a sketchbook that's super-fast and quick. Then I sort of translate it to Illustrator to work out some of that image before it actually goes onto a surface. Other times, I just have a general feeling of what I'll do, so it's a very vague, vague idea. Then I'll cut out a shape, and then make decisions as I work through what I want to do and what I want to put on that surface. And even if I plan everything, of course, stuff is prone to change, and a digital surface and a physical surface are very different things. So it has a different feeling, and it doesn't always go exactly how I planned it. So it's a combination of both.

A lot of the times, I think the shape comes first, because I think it dictates the type of imagery that I will use. So if I say, “Oh, this is a sink faucet,” I will then decide what images I want on that sink faucet, or how much detail I'm going to bring out that indicates that this indeed is a sink faucet. So I think often the shape of the object comes first. The shape of the object itself, though, is very much determined by this digital archive or by experience, because I'll be looking through something and then one thing will stand out. That will dictate the shape that I'm going to cut out, and then the imagery that I want on top of it sort of happens in the planning process. So I'll have a more thought through digital sketch before I actually cut anything out, too.

What inspires the images behind your work?

You know, it's very intuitive. Anything that sort of piques my interest just ends up being a part of this archive that I mentioned. I just have a folder dedicated to things I want to paint in the future, and then I also have a secret Tumblr where I just gather images. And also, whenever I'm in a store, like a Korean supermarket or Asian supermarket, I'm always looking for materials. So I'm always collecting these domestic objects, wherever I am. I think it just all is based on this very intuitive feeling that I get from this object, this image – it sparks my interest in some sort of way where it's all speaking to this sort of intergenerational language that I was talking about. That's being processed and made specifically here, but I'm assuming anywhere that there is a diaspora, you're negotiating different cultures, different visual identities, and all of these things create something new and something different. So I’m always trying to find something that piques my interest along the lines of building up this language.

Can you talk about any imagery or symbols that you like to work with?

I think one of the things that people notice a lot about my work is that it includes anime and cartoon figures. I think those are really important to me, because I think they were sort of the first step that I had in the aesthetic that I think about and that most interests me. I think when I was very young, you don't really know how to process identity, that's not something you're concerned about. You just don't have the words to describe the feelings that you're going through. But one thing that really was an anchor for me was the Korean stationery store. It was something I loved immediately and was very, very drawn to and understood immediately, as soon as I walked in, like, “Oh, this is something I really like. I really like this.” And so I think for the longest time that cartoons, cuteness, and this culture around creating cartoon imagery that's not just for young children, but for adults in this cute aesthetic that spans across age groups and various purposes in Asia, have always been interesting to me, because it's sort of a point of difference from here. It’s a very different type of experience, and for me, I associate it immediately with my cultural upbringing and my own family history. It also holds a lot of nostalgia, growing up around that type of imagery and holding these things as very precious, because they were rare. Like, I can't go into Staples or something and find a pencil case that I want to actually use, so having a cute pencil case from Morning Glory is this huge, big deal. And so it's a very precious item. So I think a lot of the time, I use cartoon figures and that type of imagery as a way to express this feeling of both nostalgia, but also trying to work out what it means – how I see the preciousness of being exposed to this kind of imagery as a child and how much I appreciate the access that I was given to it. I think I express a lot of my palette and a lot of my aesthetic leanings through this type of imagery. There's also so much of it online, so it's such an easy way to find ways of expressing a certain feeling without me putting myself in there smiling, or something like that. I can put in characters and their expression and they sort of take on that emotion and the time period that they came from.

I feel like a lot of the time, when I talk to certain people about my work, because of the geopolitics of Asia, they can't really distinguish between cuteness as its own thing and its ties to the negative connotations that it can have in Asia itself. I understand that too, but at the same time, I feel like it also has such a power in shaping the way of us feeling comfortable here at the same time, and I find that quite interesting. Like, you can say, “Oh, BTS, and K-pop and the nature of the whole hallyu wave is Korea’s soft power strategy,” but at the same time, it's making it easier for Koreans to live elsewhere in the world. So it's like this dual thing, and so for me, cuteness is such an interesting thing to explore, because it does hold that. I think there is something about people just looking very negatively at anything that young women particularly like. They're very much against sentimentality, they're very much against this idea of the romanticism of youth. I think there's something very lovely about that, in and of itself, but as a society, it's like, this is not serious, this is not real. And I find that not quite the best approach to dealing with something that influences so many people and can be carried by all of these people as a string.

I especially love your soft pastel color palette. How did you develop an affinity for these colors?

I think that a root of that is definitely cute culture. Cuteness, as it’s presented, is often pastel in its palette. But at the same time, I also think the way that domestic products exist in Korea, or East Asia in general, also has this very pastel palette. Like, flyswatters, colanders, baskets, all of these things have this very pastel tone to them. And I find that for me growing up, it's very noticeable by contrast. If I would visit a non-Korean friend’s home, they wouldn't have that in their house. And so for me, it becomes like a point of interesting difference. It speaks to the day to day objects that you carry in your house as sort of a defining aesthetic for you, and a very personal aesthetic for people. I feel like the domestic space to me is super interesting, because it's where we build up our first sense of self and slight sense of aesthetics. So for me, domestic products and carrying on that palette as well was really important to me. So I think that's how I sort of entirely shifted to focusing on that kind of tone.

When you create an installation with ready-made objects, what makes you pick the objects that you do?

Intuition. As I mentioned before, the whole process is very intuitive. Like if I'm walking through a supermarket and enter that domestic ware section, it’s just all the things that make me very excited. I see it, I'm like, “This is all so exciting!” So I'll just get it, or get multiples of it. And it can be for a random reason, like the color, the shape, the way that it's been stylized. I picked up recently bowls for washing fruit, because they were clear, and then they had fruits molded in relief, and it was pastel pink. I was like, “This is lovely.” So I bought five of them for no reason. I do this all the time. I'll just buy random laundry clips. I'm like, “Oh, these clips are so beautiful.” I'll just buy them. But I definitely think they all speak to this sort of language of difference – the things that are interesting and that you can't find anywhere else. The only reason I'm finding it here is because it's in this market. Those are the things that I'm interested in.

What are your favorite colors? Do they find their way into your artworks?

I really like sky blue. I don't think that color is always prominent in my work, but I think recently, just because I've been thinking a lot about windows, the sky has come back into the work because it's such a recognizable tone and setting to see a blue sky. But yeah, not that often though, I think because so much of my work is based on something that piques my interest, and entirely framing it around that.

Is there a new medium that you would like to try or to work in more?

I would like to work with sound a little bit. I haven't really tried anything with sound. I really am interested in, if I'm going to create a full scale installation, the impact that sound has on that kind of space would be really important, to me. I think sound is so involved in our memory of a place and it really shifts your sort of setting as you hear it. For example, I really like, for ASMR, crickets and cicada sounds. That's the sound that I grew up listening to as a child in New Jersey. It's a very familiar sound. One of the things that I noticed when I visited Korea actually was that the night sounds were so different. Like the soundscape, there were frogs, the cicadas sounded very different – it was just a very different soundscape and I thought that was quite interesting.

Can you talk about any anime, animations, comics, or games that you like and find visually inspiring?One of the things that is most recently inspiring, but has consistently been inspiring, has been Animal Crossing. I think I've played every version of that game, since it's come out, since 2008 or something, the GameCube version. It's so interesting to me, because it does this thing of creating these objects that are hyper detailed, to the point where someone had to take time and energy to create, for example, a rice cooker that, if you open it, steam comes out. It gets very, very deep. My gameplay, essentially what I like to do is create spaces with all of these objects that you can collect in-game, and I find that experience so interesting. At the same time, it creates this familiarity with these objects. The game was developed in Japan, so there are all of these very specific Japanese references, like they have for New Year's, mochi that's stacked up with an orange or something, which is very specific, but it creates this reference point for people who had no idea what any of this was. And now they know what it is. So it's a very interesting game on its own because of the level of detail, but it's doing what I kind of want to do, which is create a world with the things that are aestheticized in a very specific way, and then at the same time, that can be manipulated and rearranged and put together with other things, which I think is such a very appealing experience for me.

I haven't watched too many animes recently. I feel like I'm just nostalgic about the ones I used to watch as a kid, like Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura, all of these magical girls doing powerful stuff, which I think when you're ten, you’re like, “Yeah!”

Where are you located now? Do you think where you are located influences your practice?

I live out in Forest Hills, but my studio is in Long Island City. I do think location does change the way you work, beyond the difference in physical capability, like how big your space is determining the size and scale of what you can make. I think just being in a particular area and walking around it does influence how you think about your own work and what feeds into it a lot. I think being in Long Island City might be why I started making more windows, because the views in Long Island City are so beautiful. You look out any window and there are beautiful skylines everywhere. So I definitely think, even subconsciously, you just pick up on wherever you are, and that just comes out in weird ways that you might not recognize immediately, but maybe if you change your studio, move to a different space you recognize, like, “Oh, I made that work because I was at this place at this time.”

How do you stay connected to your community?

I feel like the arts community isn't too present in Long Island City. I feel like there are some people, but it's mostly studio private studio spaces, so that's not exactly an easy way to connect with people. I think for me, it's mostly just trying to reach out to friends and going to openings if they have shows, or just grabbing coffee and talking about things and now that people are more comfortable using things like Zoom, trying to stay connected that way. But I do have a very hermit-like tendency, which got a little better during the pandemic – because I spent so much time alone, I was like, “Now I want to meet everyone, I'm gonna go out all the time.” But I'm slowly returning to being a bit of a hermit and being less communicative. I'm trying to not be so hermit-like as before, trying to balance it to actually stay in touch and be connected with people.

What’s your favorite tool?

I’ve only been to Japan once, and at that time, I was in Kyoto, and where I was staying, there was this very low key brush shop. I don't make ink paintings, or I'm not a calligrapher in any way. So I was just like, I don't think I'm gonna buy anything here. But then I was like, “Oh, you know, I'm in Japan, I might as well, I heard these brushes can also work really well with acrylic, why not?” So I walked in and someone clearly was really good at making brushes – it had that vibe. They were very good brushes, and I was like, I'll just buy three brushes, and I bought the smallest brushes that they had because they make very fine paintings. I was so sad that I didn't buy twenty of them. They're so wonderful, but they're slowly losing their hairs and they're becoming very, very thin. I'm like, “Oh, I can never go back to this random brush shop in Kyoto.” I should have bought a bunch of thin ones there.

What is the space where you do your work?

I do most of my painting in my studio, which is here in Long Island City. I also do a lot of woodworking, so a lot of my paintings are on wood panels that I've cut out. I do all of that woodworking in my parents' garage – actually they live out in Jersey still, so during the pandemic I converted their garage into my own wood shop. Without asking, just like “I'm gonna buy a bunch of saws.” In any case, that's where I do a lot of my woodworking and then I bring it to studio to do the painting portion of it. At the same time, I do a lot of digital work, digital planning, so that happens at home primarily. When I can't come into the studio, or days where I'm working and I don't have the energy to go make a painting, I'll just go home and focus on the digital parts of things and explore new ideas there. At the same time, as I mentioned, I go to all of these enclave neighborhoods, supermarkets and stuff, just to buy stuff. They're mostly shopping trips, so I'll always need to take an Uber back home, like there’s no way I can carry it on the train. I do that all the time. Also, for the digital archive that I collect, I'm always looking on social media, or even sometimes when I watch Korean variety shows or Korean dramas, I just end up gravitating towards beautiful things. I mean, beautiful to me, like my standard is not what everyone has. I will look at a sticker on a window, and I'm like, “Wow, that's beautiful,” and just pause to take a screenshot of that. So a lot of the digital work is also looking at places where I can find imagery, like a drama show, or a variety show, or Tumblr or something where there are image archives and things like that.

Do you have any ritual that helps you get into the zone?

I think it's not exactly a ritual, but I like to divide thinking and doing. So all my thinking I want to do on my computer or at home. Then when I enter the studio space, I'm doing things, doing a painting, or adding a coat of primer, or something like that. So it's very task-based in the studio. And I think it's become more so especially since I don't have that much time to spare to go to studio. So I try to make studio time as efficient as possible. I think for me, dividing those two has been extremely helpful, because before I would come to studio and just spend so much time not doing anything. I'd be thinking about what I was going to do, or have some idea for what I was going to do on a surface, but then when I got to studio, I didn't really like that idea. I’ve spent all of this time just sitting and thinking, which would be fine if I had lots of time in studio, but I think with reduced time, I've just been dividing those two things and it's been very, very helpful.

When do you know when you are finished with your artwork or a body of work?

For me, I think it's very intuitive, just like a lot of other things. It just feels done, I don't want to do any more to it. It hits a moment where if I add anything else, it would ruin what I have right now. But in terms of bodies of work, I feel like I have a very consistent sort of exploration that is the through line between all of my past work and my current work. So there's no very clear division between what I was doing before and what I'm doing now. It's all following this idea of exploring this language and then iterating how to recreate it, or rearrange it, or bring it out. I think it's all been related to that, so it hasn't ended per se, just how I think about it just keeps changing.

Are there any Korean artists who you especially like?

I really like Yang Haegue. Yeah, I really like these celestial ropes that she did. She had these jingle bells, all the way up to the ceiling. Typically they just stood still, but I saw a video of them being rung. It was just amazing. I like her use of sound and her thinking through these objects and stories, connected through very physical manifestations, but also sonic manifestations, which I found very interesting. I also really like Kimsooja, in particular her bottari study series for me was very interesting, and very formative. I really love how they transform space. In the same way, Do Ho Suh also does a similar thing where he creates these silk houses that he's lived in. And imagining those interior spaces in gallery spaces was quite interesting.

Who are your favorite practicing artists?

This is a very tough question. I mean, I have so many people that I like, so I'm just going to give you a few people who I’ve consistently liked. I really like Lily van der Stokker. Her work talks about art criticism, but at the same time, the manifestation of it is very pastel and full of these bright colors, these abstracted objects that are really interesting. I really love her work. In a similar vein, I also really like Polly Apfelbaum. I really love her use of color and objects and material, I think all of it is so interesting. I don't know if you got to see it, but Tishan Hsu had an exhibition at Sculpture Center last year. My sense of time is completely wrong, so it might have been earlier than last year. But his work is also something I really, really enjoy. I think some of his recent work was visiting like family photo archives, and including photography, or photographic residue, on his digital printed works that deal with the body and the body dealing with technology. And a lot of the works that he's so well known for were made years before our relationship with technology became what it is now. So it's very interesting to see how relevant his work is, in today's context, and how much technology is completely and irrevocably intertwined with most of our lives. I also really love Karen Kilimnik’s work. Particularly, I really like her installations. Her thinking through sort of faux luxury is really interesting. I remember seeing that she made this print with witches and cats or something. Then she added current day glittery stickers of cats. I really appreciate this kind of imagery. And I also really like Kaz Oshiro, who meticulously remakes trash bins, washing machines, and cabinets as paintings. They’re 3-D, I think they’re almost true to scale to the real life thing, but they're entirely paintings.

I also really like Diane Simpson's work. I think I really like people who play with color, texture, structure, and who work somewhere in between a painted thing and sculpture. At the end of the day, I think that's the type of work that I'm very much interested in. And also people who think a lot about color and installation. I think for that reason, I also really like Haim Steinbach, who creates these colorful shelves, and then arranges these found objects on them. They're very interesting arrangements – I think it creates a different relationship to everyday objects. Rebecca Morris, I think as a painter, I just really like her paintings so much. And I remember seeing them in the Whitney Biennial, I think it was, years back. The way that she plays with pattern and the palette that she uses is still interesting to me. I feel like a lot of the time, I'm attracted to things where either I can relate to their use of color, their use of pattern, or their use of sculpture and painting at the same time, or how they think about installation. And I think that's why I also really like Robert Gober, because of his installations. I remember, I think he had a retrospective at MoMA, and I was like, “Oh my goodness.” I'd never seen installation at that scale before, so I was really, really drawn to how everything was his in that space, and how much he controlled the aesthetic of that entire experience. I was very moved by that – like the wallpaper, the newspaper, these rat poison boxes, cat food boxes, all of them being hand-painted. Having this feeling where he's just controlling the entirety of what you're seeing and how you're moving through that, I think that's when I really realized the potential of what installation can do and what you can, as an artist, do to control how someone feels in space.

What gives you the feeling of butterflies in your stomach?

I think if I'm excited to see something that piques my interest. “Oh my God, that's a beautiful color! Oh, that's a beautiful pattern! Oh, I'm so excited to see this artwork!” That's the thing that really gets me super butterflies in my stomach feeling. It’s just like an instantaneous physical reaction to something, usually something aesthetic.

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