Eunha Kim was born and raised in South Korea and immigrated to the U.S. in 2004. Having struggled with feelings of displacement, cultural clashing, and disorientation between past and present, she constructs a vivid visual vocabulary portraying anxiety, alienation, and a desire to belong. Humor and joy frees the image from homogeneity. Kim uses traditional Korean masks to represent herself as well as the unknown. The theatricality of the masks accentuates and exaggerates the complexities of humanness. Kim poses thought-provoking and challenging questions regarding race, class, and gender. Adopting the title from Sara Ahmed’s Willful Subjects (2014), Kim claims and celebrates her willfulness to keep her cultural heritage as a Korean.

Image: Eunha Kim, Breathing, 2019. Monotype.