I Belong Here
Call for Artists 2021
Exhibition Dates (Extended): May 18, 2021 - July 16, 2021
Gallery Korea of the Korean Cultural Center New York
460 Park Avenue, 6th Floor, NYC
Participating artists: Won Jung Choi, Talia Connelly, Léllé Demertzi, Nene Aïssatou Diallo, Erica Entrop, Mookwon Han, SeonHee Sunny Kim, SeungTack Lim, Ana Mendes, and Ki Gin Yang
Gallery Korea of the Korean Cultural Center in New York is pleased to present I belong here, the Call for Artists group exhibition featuring artworks of ten emerging artists: Won Jung Choi, Talia Connelly, Léllé Demertzi, Nene Aïssatou Diallo, Erica Entrop, Mookwon Han, SeonHee Sunny Kim, SeungTack Lim, Ana Mendes, and Ki Gin Yang. These artists integrate their personal identities with particular cultural elements and ideas across a variety of mediums, including painting, sculpture, mixed media, video, and installation.
As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to threaten the lives of people all over the world, it also brought to the surface structural racism and prevailing resistance to diversity that are ingrained in every aspect of our lives. The selected artists are primarily based in the United States but have a wide range of cultural backgrounds: from Korea, China, Portugal, Germany, Canada, Cuba, and Guinea. And through their works, the artists examine their personal identity issues as well as broader cultural conflicts they have experienced firsthand. Collectively, the works highlight social and political issues that take root in prejudice and racism and encourage viewers to think about and engage with these themes on a deeper level.The title of the exhibition embodies the artists’ unified voices against discrimination and establishment of belonging.
Call for Artists is a highly competitive program hosted by the Korean Cultural Center New York every year, and each artist is carefully selected by a group of renowned curators and critics active in New York.
About Artists
Won Jung Choi
Won Jung Choi’s series of sculptures, paintings, drawings, and installations explore the power of her ever changing identity in the making. Choi was born and raised in Seoul, Korea and received her BFA and MFA in Sculpture from Hongik University and an MFA in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts. She has been awarded residencies at the Museum of Arts and Design and Artists Alliance Inc. (AAI) in New York. Her work has been exhibited widely in the US and internationally at Wave Hill, Bronx, NY; Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT; Gwangju Museum of Art, Gwangju, Korea; Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art, Staten Island, NY; Space cottonseed, Singapore; and Arario Gallery, Seoul, Korea, among others. Choi currently lives and works in Virginia.
Talia Connelly
Talia Connelly is a textile artist, painter, and product designer who immigrated to the USA from China when she was five. From Seattle, Washington and currently based in Boston, Connelly’s background, early memories of travel, and overlapping languages led to her interest in the concepts of migration, boundaries, and cultural transitions. She received her BFA in Textile Design from Rhode Island School of Design and since graduating, has worked in fashion, footwear, and material design industries. Her work has been part of Color Exhibition at the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition (New York, NY) and XL Catlin Art Prize Traveling Exhibition (San Francisco, Chicago, New York), and has been featured in "Emerging Artists 2018" of Fiber Art Now Magazine.
Léllé Demertzi
Léllé Demertzi (b.1993) graduated from the School of Architecture, National Technical University of Athens in 2017. She also studied Acting at the Athens Conservatory Drama School and completed the MA Raumstrategien (Spatial Strategies) at Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee in July 2019. She was a 12-month intern at the International Program of the Museum of Modern Art, 2019-2020. Currently she is a Visual Arts Fellow for Artworks, funded by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation. She has presented her work (performance, video, installation, photomontage) in solo and group exhibitions in Athens (GR), Berlin (DE), Zurich and Luzern (CH), Salzburg (AU), Accra (GH) and New York (USA). She is a founding member of the artist duo Reservoir Peacocks, advocating for female empowerment. Recurring matters in her artistic research are identity, displacement and the need for belongingness, the 'self' and 'the other', the in-between spaces, language and silence, memory, the presence and the absence, the scars and the stars on the digital era.
Nene Aïssatou Diallo
Nene Aïssatou Diallo (born in Guinea; lives in Newark, NJ) is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work is centered around photography, video, textiles, and collage. She works through the tension and displacement that is inherent with immigration and to resist legacies of erasure. Diallo holds a B.A. in Visual Media and Arts Practices, as well as Women, Gender, and Sexualities Studies from the University of Richmond. She has exhibited throughout the United States and has attended residencies at The Vermont Studio Center, Project for Empty Space, Gallery Aferro, Index Art Center, The Residency Project, and will soon attend STONELEAF RETREAT.
Erica Entrop
Erica Entrop is an artist based in Havana, Cuba whose project started from a series of images that she had captured while riding through public transportation in Los Angeles. Entrop was born in Roswell, New Mexico and after receiving her BFA from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, has traveled extensively and participated in exhibitions across the country and Cuba. Entrop’s works have recently been included in the Premier edition of Blue Bee Magazine, and she has participated in the 13th Havana Biannual and the 25th Romerias Festival showcasing her film works.
Mookwon Han
Mookwon Han was born in Gyeongju, Korea and currently lives and works in New York. Han has had solo shows at Kyung In Museum, Seoul; Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul; Doosan Gallery NY, and CUE Art Foundation, and has participated in group exhibitions internationally at Cube Museum, Seongnam; NYC Media Center; Asia Society India Centre, Mumbai; David Zwirner Gallery, NYC, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, among others. Han received an MFA from the School of Visual Arts, attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and participated in residencies at Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Seoul Foundation for Art and Culture, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Program, and LMCC’s Arts Center at Governors Island.
Seonhee Sunny Kim
Seonhee Sunny Kim received her BA in Photography from Chung-Ang University and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She was selected as an emerging artist of the New Beginning award by Mercedes Benz Financial Services and featured in Dwell 24 of Dwell Magazine in 2019. During the 2019 NYC design week, she won the NYC x Design Award for emerging designer and exhibited her works at the launch pad show at the WantedDesign. She recently had her solo shows Light Lights at Imagination of Space, Cooper Union in Governors Island, New York in 2020 and Slice of Light at Rund Gallery, Seoul in 2021.
SeungTack Lim
SeungTack Lim received a BFA in Sculpture at Gachon University and an MFA in Rinehart School of Sculpture at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). He has had several exhibitions in Korea and the United States. He had a solo show in 2016 for his drawing and sculpture in Seoul and was recently awarded a Red Hook IFPM community mural project in New York by NYC Emergency Management in 2018. He attended residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and NARS Foundation in Brooklyn, New York.
Ana Mendes
Based in London and Stockholm, Ana Mendes studied Animation Film at La Poudrière École du Film d’Animation, Valence, France, Photography at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Germany, completed an MA in Writing for Performance at Goldsmiths College, London, and studied Video at the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm. She has held individual exhibitions at the Natural History Museum, Vienna and Universalmuseum Joanneum/Natural History Museum, Graz, Austria, as well as group exhibitions at the Universalmuseum Joanneum, Graz, Austria; Kunsthalle Zurich, Jerwood Space, London, UK; and Metropolitan Arts Centre, Belfast, UK, among others.
Ki Gin Yang
Ki Gin Yang received her BA and MFA in Painting at Seoul National University. She was selected for funding from GyeongGi Cultural Foundation and presented her work at Aram Art gallery of the Goyang Cultural Foundation. She held her solo exhibition, The Layers of Water at Emu Art Space. Her works are collected in several organizations such as the Vatech Networks, Korea and Embassy of Republic of Korea in Algeria.