In this Episode of Art is Awesome, Host Emily Wilson spends time with multimedia artist Heesoo Kwon.
Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area.
Today, Emily chats with SF based multimedia artist Heesoo Kwon...
About Artist Heesoo Kwon:
Heesoo Kwon is a multidisciplinary artist based in San Francisco. Positioning herself as an artist, activist, archivist, anthropologist, and religious figure. Kwon builds feminist utopias in the digital realm that liberate one from personal, familial, and historical trauma rooted in patriarchy. Central to her practice and substantial bodies of work is Leymusoom, an autobiographical feminist religion she initiated in 2017 as a form of personal resistance against misogyny and an ever-evolving framework for investigating her family histories. Kwon utilizes technologies such as digital archiving, 3D scanning, and animation as her ritualistic and shamanistic tools to regenerate her woman ancestors’ lives without constraints of time and space, and to queer her past, present, and utopian dreams.
Kwon earned a Master of Fine Arts at the University of California, Berkeley, and will start her position as an Assistant Professor in the Animation department at California College of the Arts in the Fall of 2023. She has had solo and group exhibitions at Berkeley Art Museum Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA; Artists' Television Access, San Francisco, CA; San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Gray Area, San Francisco, CA; A.I.R. Gallery, New York, NY; 47 Canal, New York, NY; Blinkers Art & Project Space, Winnipeg, Canada; West Den Haag, Netherlands; CICA Museum, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea; Alternative Space Loop, Seoul, South Korea and WMA Space, Hong Kong. She has also participated in international projects, biennales, and festivals, as such CineMigrante Argentina, Buenos Aires, Argentina; ART CITY Bologna 2021, Bologna, Italy; Sheffield DocFest Arts Programme 2021, Site Gallery, Sheffield, UK; 20th Seoul International ALT Cinema & Media Festival, Seoul, South Korea; Feminism Media Artivist Biennale, I-GONG Alternative Visual Culture Factory, Seoul, South Korea; 3rd MINIKINO FILM WEEK - Official 2017 Final list, Bali, Indonesia and the ASIA DIGITAL ART EXHIBITION 2022, Beijing, China. She was recently awarded the 2025 Eureka Fellowship from the Fleishhacker Foundation and the 2022 50 Arts Commission for Media Arts from the Hewlett Foundation. She was a finalist for the 2021 SECA Award at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the 2021 Queer|Art|Prize at Queer|Art.
Visit Heesoo's Website: HeesooKwon.com
Follow Heesoo on Instagram: @Leymusoom
For more about Heesoo's upcoming exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art San Jose, CLICK HERE.
Link up to learn about Heesoo's Micki Meng Exhibit HERE.
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About Podcast Host Emily Wilson:
Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women’s Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco.
Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWil
Follow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast
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CREDITS:
Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson.
Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
The Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions.
For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com
2023-07-18 - AIA - EP005 - Heesoo Kwon-1
[00:00:00]Artist Heesoo Kwon:I wanted to enter the TV. I wanted to mess up the lunch table. That was the motivation to making a 3D avatar of myself because I really wanted to see myself make some changes.
[00:00:17]Host Emily Wilson: That's artist Heesoo Kwon talking about how old home videos made her so angry that she made an avatar of herself to enter the scene and change the family dynamics.
Welcome to Art is Awesome. The show where we talk with an artist, or artworker, with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area. I'm your host, Emily Wilson. As a writer in San Francisco covering the arts, I see so many hardworking artists doing interesting work here in the Bay Area, and I wanted people to know about them.
So I came up [00:01:00] with Art is Awesome. Today we'll be talking with multimedia artist, Heesoo Kwon, who lives in San Francisco. Heesoo grew up in South Korea and studied business at a women's college. Then she made a radical change and decided to become an artist. Heesoo wanted to go to school in the US. And she got accepted everywhere she applied — the Rhode Island School of Design, Cranbrook Academy of Art, University of Chicago School of Art, the Pratt Institute. She chose to get her MFA at the University of California, Berkeley because of professors she met there and for the opportunity to collaborate with other departments,
As you could probably tell, Heesoo doesn't do things quite like other people. When she was a student at Berkeley, she started an autobiographical feminist religion called Leymusoom. Spurred by the sadness she feels about how women are treated in Korea, she wants to use her art to liberate herself and her ancestors.
In her work, she rewrites family histories with lenticular light boxes and videos. Like our last guest on the podcast, Ron Saunders, Heesoo was a Yerba Buena Center for the Arts 100 honoree. She has a solo show coming up in September at the Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose, and she's doing a residency at the Institute of Contemporary Art, San Francisco. Heesoo is also a recipient of Hewlett 50 for Media Arts.
Growing up in Seoul, Heesoo's grandmother lived with the family and was a big influence on her. A Flower Strong in the Wind, a recent show of Heisoo's work at San Francisco's Mickey Ming Gallery, honors her grandmother. whose name means root and flower. A video in the show, Ritual for Metamorphosis, is the first one Heesoo made where she used her avatar.
The idea came to her when she saw some old home movies in Korea while on summer vacation.
[00:03:22]Artist Heesoo Kwon: Most of the footages were taken by my dad. I could see a lot of family rituals. And like the way how my family members are interacting to each other, like there are a lot of like interesting dynamic between my mom and my grandma and also my dad, and also many Catholic religious rituals.
Host Emily Wilson: Standing by the video playing in the gallery, Heesoo talks about how one scene in particular shows how women are treated in Korea.
Artist Heesoo Kwon:There is a moment that I feel so upset because there is a scene where my mom is the only one who is [00:04:00] eating the meal standing. And serving people. So she's holding the bowl standing. Uh, other people are, they don't care about my mom in the footage, just like eating the meal. And my mom is like always like, ready to see like whatever they need, you know? So I really feel so angry.
Host Emily Wilson:Heesoo created an avatar of herself to go join her family members and alter the dynamics.
Artist Heesoo Kwon:I wanted to enter the TV when I see the footage and I was like, I want to mess up the lunch table. So that was the motivation to making 3D Avatar of myself because I really wanted to see myself make some changes.
Host Emily Wilson:When she was growing up in Seoul, Hyesoo had no plans to be an artist. She earned a business degree in 2015 and developed new packaging to conceal sanitary napkins. For which she won a Female Inventor of the Year award. But then, she says, [00:05:00] she realized her project was rooted in shame about her body.
Artist Heesoo Kwon: What I learned from the business field was how to monetize my body and my emotions, and my friends, my family, without even recognizing that. And the business model that I planned to do at that moment was, like, to reproduce the misogyny and patriarchy.
Host Emily Wilson:Making the avatar of herself to enter the old family videos inspired Heesoo to create her religion, Leymusoom, which has roots in Korean shamanism. The exhibition had lenticular light boxes with photos of Heesoo, her mom, and her grandma.
At events like her one-year-old birthday party and her first communion, again, she's trying to change family dynamics by inserting Le Muso figures into these photos. In Korean shamanism, women and snakes are spiritual, and the Le MoSo in the photos are reptilian figures [00:06:00] who are shown as comforting. In one photo, there's a hand on her grandmother's shoulder and in another, the figure's arms are around Heesoo’s mother and godmother at her First Communion. The story of Adam and Eve, as well as shamanism, influenced Leymusoom.
Artist Heesoo Kwon:I visualized Leymusoom as female and snake, or reptile because I got inspired by the catholic genesis that my grandma really forced me to read every day I think the message from the genesis It's knowledge is dangerous.If you try to know what's going to happen or what's, what's behind the logic of the word that you are involved in, then you will get punished or that's not allowed to you. That feels personal to Hyesoo. That was the similar. reaction I got from my family and my friends in Korea before I become an artist.
Whenever I questioned the, [00:07:00] patriarchy and misogyny in Korean society or like the commercial field, they were like, why do you make the kind of like questions? And like, why do I make other people's lives so hard by like questioning them, you know? So I wanted to reimagine the female and Snake character. They just try to understand what's going on, you know, like me. They were perceived as the harmful being.
Host Emily Wilson: This month, Heesoo is starting a residency at the Institute of Contemporary Art, San Francisco. Collaborators will be writing and making art revolving around Leymusoom.
This is the part of the show called Three Questions, where I ask the artists I'm talking to When did you know you were an artist? What was a work of art that made a big impression on you? And what is the most creatively inspiring place in the Bay Area? [00:08:00] Hyesoo said she knew she was an artist when she got disillusioned with business and took some classes in Korean women's history and art history.
Artist Heesoo Kwon:I think that was the turning point and I saw feminist artists works during the classes and that kind of changed my whole life. I was not exposed to any art field or any philosophy, but like seeing some artists like talking about the issues that I feel really important and also like, um, using their body and their lives to talk about it.
And it was really amazing and fascinating. And I realized that, Oh, that's what I want to do. It took a really long time to recognize and accept that, that I want to be an artist. I was too far from the, the dream, like my, I was just like the senior year in business major and never made art before, but that was the turning point.
And I just [00:09:00] realized that, Oh, I should be an artist. What was a work of art that made a big impression on you? It was the photograph. It was nude body of the artist and like. Yeah, so that work was the most impressive and life changing that made me to be an artist, actually.
Yeah. And what's the most creatively inspiring place in the Bay Area?
Artist Heesoo Kwon:I love to visit my friends houses, to be honest. And many of my friends are in Korean Diaspora or Asian Diaspora. And whenever I see and visit their houses. I just know like, Oh, this is the community that I want to belong to. And just feels like I'm visiting my home again too. And I can learn about them and learn about their family and their lives.
And sharing food together. I [00:10:00] love to cook for friends. Sometimes I just make banchan, like the side dishes in Korean recipe. Like it can be like some, uh, spinach, namul, or like some radish, and like pickle, like in Korean, with some Korean seasonings. I just make and like deliver to my friends. It's for me like the food and the home and the way how they live their life reflects. That's where I am most inspired.
Host Emily Wilson: And that's this week's episode of Art is Awesome. Thanks again to our guest, San Francisco multimedia artist, Hesu Kwan. Hesu has solo shows this fall at the Institute of Contemporary Art in San Jose, and a residency at the Institute of Contemporary Art, San Francisco. You can get more information and link to her [00:11:00] work in our show notes.
Please subscribe and rate us. Wherever you get your podcasts, our next episode features photographer Shao Feng Hsu. He had asthma as a kid in Taiwan and to strengthen his lungs, he took swimming lessons. Shao Feng went to the International Center of Photography in New York before coming to San Francisco to study at the California College of the Arts, where he now teaches. He's currently a fellow at the Headland Center for the Arts, and he won the Juror's Choice Award for a series at SF Camera Works of photograms he made of his breath underwater.
Art is Awesome is a bi weekly podcast, released every other Tuesday. It was created and is hosted by me, Emily Wilson. It's produced and edited by Charlene Goto of Goto Productions. Our theme music is provided by Kevin MacLeod [00:12:00] with Incompetech Music. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at artisawesomepodcast or visit our website.
Thanks for listening.