JooYoung Choi is a Houston-based Korean American multidisciplinary visual artist working with paintings, sculpture, and video to portray the mythology of a fictional world called the Cosmic Womb.

Personal life

Choi was born in

Seoul, South Korea Seoul, officially Seoul Special Metropolitan City, is the capital city, capital and largest city of South Korea. The broader Seoul Metropolitan Area, encompassing Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and Incheon, emerged as the world's List of cities b ...

in 1982, immigrating to

Concord, New Hampshire Concord () is the capital city of the U.S. state of New Hampshire and the county seat, seat of Merrimack County, New Hampshire, Merrimack County. As of the 2020 United States census the population was 43,976, making it the List of municipalities ...

through adoption in the early 1980s. She earned her undergraduate degree from the

Massachusetts College of Art and Design Massachusetts College of Art and Design, branded as MassArt, is a public college of visual and applied art in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1873, it is one of the nation's oldest art schools, and the only publicly funded independent art sch ...

and her M.F.A. in Visual Art from the

Art Institute of Boston Lesley University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. It was founded in 1909 to educate teachers. Originally founded as a women's college, male students were admitted beginning in 2005. History 1909–1998 The ...

Work

Choi's work includes soft sculptures, puppets, paintings, animation, and video art. Her first puppets were created in 2015 during a residency at Lawndale Art Center, while also working to develop her skills as a painter and finding a love for visually balanced dynamic compositions.

Cosmic Womb

The Cosmic Womb is a

paracosm A paracosm is a detailed imaginary world thought generally to originate in childhood. The creator of a paracosm has a complex and deeply felt relationship with this subjective universe, which may incorporate real-world or imaginary characters a ...

with its own characters and mythology, with the motto "Have Faith, for You've Always Been Loved." It is a way of exploring aspects of her own identity and her experiences with adoption, offering ways for Choi to step into the roles of different characters. The Cosmic Womb is governed by an earthling from Concord (the city of her childhood) named C.S. Watson, alongside the Tuplets, who are six humanoids with special powers, and Queen Kiok.

Selected awards

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the feder ...

, Challenge America grant recipient, 2019 *The Idea Fund, Round Eleven Stimulus grant, 2019 *Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs and Houston Arts Alliance, Support for Artist and Creative Individuals grant, 2019 *Riverfest Artist-in-Residence, 2018 *The Idea Fund, Round Eight Spark grant, 2016 *Artadia Fund for Art and Dialogue, Artadia Award, 2015

References

External links

Official Website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Choi, JooYoung Living people American women sculptors American artists of Korean descent American women installation artists American installation artists 21st-century American women painters 21st-century American painters Massachusetts College of Art and Design alumni American sculptors 1982 births American contemporary painters