The Fantastical World of JooYoung Choi at the Crow Museum of Asian Art
The exhibition is the third and final installment of the museum’s multi-year series featuring Texas-based contemporary Asian women artists.
In Houston-based artist JooYoung Choi’s imaginary world, superheroes, vibrantly colored flowers, and a magic bed represent human resilience and strength.
JooYoung Choi: Songs of Resilience from the Tapestry of Faith is on view at the Crow Museum of Asian Art in the Dallas Arts District through September 4.
Choi’s exhibition is the third and final installation of the museum’s multi-year series featuring Texas-based contemporary Asian women artists. Choi was born in Seoul, South Korea, adopted and raised in Concord, Massachusetts. She moved to Houston in 2012.
The multidisciplinary artist uses paintings, large-scale soft-sculptural works, puppets, music, and video to explore issues of identity and belonging through an elaborate sci-fi world she created. “She builds everything you see,” said Jacqueline Chao, the museum’s senior curator of Asian art.
She calls her universe the Cosmic Womb, filling it with spectacular characters.
“So many of these characters are very rich with complex layered backstories with superheroes, villains, and they are very multi-dimensional ," Chao said. "What’s really special about this exhibition is being able to connect this sci-fi fantasy genre universe while also highlighting individual characters."
The Scene
Choi was inspired by the media of her childhood such as Sesame Street, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, and the Marvel Universe. Throughout the exhibition are character cards similar to the Marvel Universe Guidebook Choi enjoyed reading with her friends at the school cafeteria. Each card explains the character’s backstory, superpower and includes gender pronouns.
“We want to showcase their fullness as beings,” Chao said.
The artist merges her personal adoption story into her work to process the emotional arc of her life.
“I wanted this show to celebrate all the different kinds of strands, all these different kind of experiences that I’ve had that have woven together to create my own tapestry of faith that brought me on the journey to be brave enough to go to Korea by myself to find my birth family,” Choi said.
Choi celebrates the people who encouraged her by creating characters with superpowers.
“Every journey that we go on in our lives, there are hundreds of people who have been there in one way or another to help us believe we are brave and strong and can do the things we are called to do in our lives, whether it’s a teacher who stays with us after school or a family friend that just takes us on a drive when we’re having a hard time to talk about our feelings," Chao said. "These moments come together to create our tapestry of faith. Each of the paintings is a moment, is that strand, that song of resilience, where something reminds us, ‘You’ve got this. You’re stronger than you even realize’ is celebrated in each of these pieces in one way or another.”
For the large-scale soft-sculptural work, Like a Bolt Out of the Blue, Faith Steps In and Sees You Through, Choi recruited volunteers to create flowers in a garden called Garden of Love and Courage. The flowers are meant to represent someone who loves the volunteer unconditionally.
With the help of her parents, a three-year-old volunteer created a flower representing tigers.
“She grabbed her grandmother’s hand at the opening and dragged her grandma in and said, ‘Grandma, I’m in a museum,’” Choi said. “For her to feel that level of privilege and that art is for her too means so much to me.”
Like a Bolt Out of the Blue features a magic bed named Pom Pom Thunder who reunites separated families using a superhighway of dreams. As an interactive element of the exhibition, patrons can write down their dreams using a blacklight pen to encourage Pom Pom Thunder on her journey.
This exhibition includes Choi’s newest film, Spectra Force Vive: Infinite Pie Delivery Service. The film introduces superheroes who save the world by freeing the untold stories and silenced truths of the universe.
“They go around the universe reminding people they don’t have to fight for their slice of the pie," Choi said. "We all have our own pie, our own path, and our own vision of our lives."
Choi developed the film after interviewing people about identity and the American media’s representation of girls, women, intersex, transgender, and non-binary people of color. Choi created the film using puppets and voice actors, artists, musicians, and puppeteers from around the world during the pandemic.
“Even though we were so socially distanced, I was able to make these extraordinary friends through technology,” Choi said. “I learned so much and I think I became more able to share my work and widen the circle of creativity through the process.”
The exhibition is designed to bring out the child in everyone.
“Hopefully it can bring out that inner child part of yourself and you can remember your song of resilience and you can share it with people you bring into this space,” Choi said.
Learn more at https://crowcollection.org/exhibition/jooyoung-choi/.
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