Young Joon Kwak and Kim Ye: Where I am My Own Other, Where My Mother Is Me
A collaborative production that complicates the tension between psychological interior and exterior
A collaborative production that complicates the tension between psychological interior and exterior
2017 / single channel video / 15min 3sec
A collaboration between artists Young Joon Kwak and Kim Ye, Where I Am My Own Other, Where My Mother Is Me (2017) complicates the tension between the psychological interior and exterior, performative action and documentation, fantasy and trauma, and the narrativization of gender transition. The video oscillates between footage of a performance the duo presented in 2016 at the Hammer Museum and lushly seductive, dream-like breaks that recreate the actions performed in the prior presentation. - David Evans Frantz
About the artists
Young Joon Kwak (b. 1984, Queens, New York) is a Los Angeles-based multi-disciplinary artist and community organizer whose work poses alternative ways of viewing and interpreting bodies, and creates connections that bridge communities across a wide variety of socio-cultural, institutional, and alternative art contexts. They have exhibited and performed at galleries and institutions internationally, including Arko Art Center (Seoul), Korean Cultural Center (Los Angeles), Commonwealth and Council (Los Angeles), Hauser & Wirth (New York), Tufts University Art Galleries (Boston), Walter Phillips Gallery (Banff), Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), and The Broad (Los Angeles). They are the recipient of a Korean Arts Foundation of America (KAFA) Artist Award (2020), Rema Hort Mann Foundation’s Emerging Artist Grant (2018), Artist Community Engagement Grant (2016), and Art Matters Foundation Grant (2016).
Kim Ye (b. 1984, Beijing, China) is a Los Angeles-based artist whose work incorporates performance, video, installation, and text. She received her MFA from UCLA (2012) and BA from Pomona College (2007). Influenced by language and aesthetics from BDSM, drag, self-help, and spiritual practices, her work activates the body as a site of both aspiration and abjection. Often drawing on personal archives, she creates public situations of intimacy and exchange and queers the institutions that shape private life. She has performed and exhibited nationally and internationally at The Hammer Museum, Getty Center, Banff Center for Arts, Material Art Fair, Human Resources, Machine Project, Morán Morán, Satellite Art Fair, and Visitor Welcome Center among others. She currently teaches at California Institute of the Arts and is on the board of Sex Workers Outreach Project Los Angeles.
