JooYoung Choi, Journey to the Cosmic Womb

0:00:05.8 Dr. Steven Zucker: We’re in the Hudson River Museum looking at a large painting by JooYoung Choi. But the word painting isn’t enough. This is collage. This is a comic book on an enormous scale. In fact, at the very top, in uppercase block letters, it says giant-size superstars just to set the tone for this canvas.

0:00:24.0 Dr. Karintha Lowe: There’s something about this work that is just immediately vibrant and bold and eye catching. From the large superscript font that’s written in this comic-book style to all of the vibrant colors.

0:00:36.2 Dr. Steven Zucker: This is a wildly complicated image, but it’s only a fraction of the complication of the narrative universe that this artist has built.

0:00:43.9 Dr. Karintha Lowe: I think when you look at her work, a word that you really need to learn is paracosm, this detailed imaginary world that we often come up with as children. And this work is a journey into that place that she imagined for herself as a child and has continued to build through her artistic practice.

0:01:04.7 Dr. Steven Zucker: And that artistic practice involves not only painting, not only collage, that is what we’re seeing here, but also full-scale installations that include plush creatures, puppets, sculptures, as well as video performance. Just below the words “Journey to the Cosmic Womb,” there’s text that is found in quite a number of her works. “Have faith for you have always been loved.” And her work is incredibly optimistic. It is embracing. In fact she talks about the hugs that she receives from her characters, and this speaks to her own personal journey.

0:01:39.1 Dr. Karintha Lowe: So something that’s helpful to understand about JooYoung Choi and her progress as an artist is that she was adopted from South Korea and was raised in Concord, New Hampshire during the 80s. And this was a time period in which there was, I think, less than 1% of the population were non-white people of color. And so she talks a lot about growing up and feeling not necessarily seen or represented, not only in her surrounding communities, but in a lot of the worlds that she was watching on television. In a lot of the comic books, she saw figures who weren’t white, but they were infrequent. And she wanted to create for herself a representative universe in which she was a hero, in which she saw other heroes who reflected herself and her friends.

0:02:21.3 Dr. Steven Zucker: She’s spoken about repeatedly how she wondered who her birth parents were. She wondered about the world that she had come out of that she had no memories of. One of the few things she did have from Korea was her adoption case number, K83-3696. And she uses that as the foundation to build her universe. So for instance, the figure that we’re seeing in the pink dress with a large key is Lady Kiok, and her name comes from that first letter of that adoption record.

0:02:54.0 Dr. Karintha Lowe: And Lady Kiok is a real hero across this Cosmic Womb, across this paracosm. And she talks about her as a forest ranger, actually of this world, as a steward, as someone who’s protecting this environment. And I really love this idea of a forest ranger because it speaks to the texture and the real liveliness of this universe that needs to be saved from encroaching villains like villain Lady Madness, who is sort of an anti hero within this world and who all of the figures that we see here oftentimes will come together and fight against.

0:03:29.9 Dr. Steven Zucker: Villain Lady Madness has imprisoned and enslaved children, and her heroes are saving them and are reuniting these children with their parents. And of course, that functions on two levels. It’s part of the artist’s own biography, but it also speaks to contemporary politics. And the artist has spoken about the fact that she’s aware that she has two audiences. She wants to enchant children, but she also wants serious and deeper messages to resonate with their parents.

0:03:58.3 Dr. Karintha Lowe: She really thinks about how there’s a long history in comic books, in animation, in the world of cartoons, to have these bright designs, these apparently simplistic stories or symbols that carry with them deeper messages. I’ll have to bring our attention to another character on this canvas, Emo Flower No. 36. And again, we can think about number 36, that name comes from her case number. It’s a feminine figure who’s covered in flowers. And Emo Flower No. 36 is a superhero of sorts who can blend in and take the shape of flowers. So she could be quite literally a wallflower, but actually she uses that flower. She propels it outwards to attack and to get rid of the bad guys, as JooYoung Choi says. And I love this idea that she takes a wallflower and turns that into the powerful, protective, fabulous skill that a superhero can have.

0:04:50.8 Dr. Steven Zucker: There’s so much pleasure and so much beauty and so much play. It is just an incredibly inspiring work that invites us in and invites us to be one of these superheroes and to help to vanquish villain Lady Madness.

0:05:05.4 Dr. Karintha Lowe: I will note that JooYoung Choi still has love for her villains. She talks a lot about how there’s something really pleasurable, actually, about a villain who announces herself. She says, “It’s good to be bad,” and really enjoys taking center stage. And so even there, there’s sort of a joy in the impulse to put yourself first, even if that is in distinction to this communal landscape that we have before us.

This work at Art Bridges

The artist’s website

Watch “Songs of Resilience: JooYoung Choi Artist Interview” from the Crow Museum of Asian Art

Read an interview with the artist from the Parrish Art Museum

Contemporary art, an introduction

1980–now in the United States, an introduction

Read a Reframing Art History textbook chapter, Popular, transient, expendable: print culture and propaganda in the 20th century