Children Need Love Like Flowers Need Rain: JooYoung Choi
Fort Worth Contemporary Arts, March 1 - May 4, 2024
JooYoung Choi creates future worlds through interdisciplinary means. Employing painting, video, sculpture, animation, puppetry and installation art, she documents the interconnecting narratives of The Cosmic Womb, an expansive, and partly autobiographical, fictional land. With its own characters and mythology, this imagined space allows Choi to explore her own identity through multiple roles and different characters. Guided by this creative narrative, she explores themes such as anti-racism, gender inclusivity, trans-racial adoptee rights, post-traumatic growth, and spirituality rooted in social justice.
At Fort Worth Contemporary Arts Choi presents Resilient Heart, 2022-24, a soft sculpture installation, in conversation with a series of paintings. Utilizing bright colors, dense imagery and sensuous textures, she creates a dynamic and playful energy between objects; collectively the works entice viewers to consider the human spirit. Choi’s work is inspired by Taoist ideas concerning the adaptable nature of water, and she considers the potential for flexibility, growth, strength and courage in daily our experience. How can people embrace a childlike wisdom after reaching adulthood? How can we retain a sense of wonder, playfulness and engagement with the natural world? Choi’s presentation of a second sculptural installation, Freedom from Madness, 2016-17 further reveals connecting story threads within The Cosmic Womb.
Houston-based artist JooYoung Choi was born in Seoul, South Korea, and emigrated to Concord, New Hampshire in 1982/3 by way of adoption. While completing her BFA at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, she returned to South Korea and reunited with her birth family. Since receiving her MFA from Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Choi’s artwork has been exhibited in such venues as the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY; The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, TX; Project Row Houses, Houston, TX; The Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience, Seattle, WA; The National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago, IL; The Art Museum of South East Texas, Beaumont, TX; Lawndale Art Center, Houston, TX, the 2021 Texas Biennial and The Crow Museum of Asian Art, Dallas, Texas. Choi has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Artadia, Idea Fund, Houston Art Alliance, and the Houston Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs. She has also participated in the Lawndale Artist Residency in Houston, TX, and the Harvester Artist Residency in Wichita, KS. Choi’s work has been featured by numerous media groups and publications, including the PBS Digital Studios Art Assignment, Korean Global News Network YTN, the LA Times, New American Paintings, Arts+Culture Magazine, the Houston Chronicle, Glasstire, Houston’s PaperCity, Texas Monthly and the Huffington Post.
JooYoung Choi is represented by Inman Gallery, Houston.
