Young Joon Kwak (they/them and she/her) is a LA-based multidisciplinary artist and educator whose work spans sculpture, performance, music, video, and community-based collaborations, creating connections that bridge communities across a wide variety of socio-cultural, institutional, and alternative art contexts. Through sculptural manipulations of the form, functionality, and materiality of objects, they question common modes of perception and bodily objectification, while posing alternative ways of viewing bodies “beyond the skin.” Kwak is the founder of Mutant Salon, a roving beauty salon/platform for collaborative performances and installations with their community of queer, trans, femme, POC artists and performers. They are lead performer in the electronic-dance-noise band Xina Xurner. Kwak presented solo and collaborative exhibitions internationally at galleries and institutions including Arko Art Center, Seoul, South Korea (2022); Korean Cultural Center, LA (2021); Commonwealth & Council, LA (2021, 2017, 2016, 2014); Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (2018); and Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre, Alberta, Canada (2018). Kwak performed at The Box (2022, 2017); CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2019); Serendipity Arts Festival, Goa, India (2018); Art Museum of the National University of Colombia, Bogotá (2018); Institute of Contemporary Art, LA (2018); Hammer Museum, LA (2016); The Broad, LA (2016); and Night Gallery, LA (2014). Selected group exhibitions have been held at Hauser & Wirth, New York (2021), Tufts University Art Galleries, Boston (2021); Lyles & King, New York (2021); Deli Gallery, New York (2020); Antenna Space, Shanghai (2019); Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco (2019); 47 Canal, New York (2018); Anonymous Gallery, Mexico City (2018); Smack Mellon, New York (2016); and Le Pavillon Vendôme Centre d’Art Contemporain, Clichy, France (2016). Kwak held residencies at Michigan State University (2020–2021) and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (Summer 2018). Kwak was awarded the California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists (2022), Korea Arts Foundation of America’s Award for the Visual Arts (2020), Rema Hort Mann Foundation’s Emerging Artist Grant (2018), Artist Community Engagement Grant (2016), and the Art Matters Grant (2016). Kwak serves on the boards of the Feminist Center for Creative Work and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions. Kwak currently teaches at CalArts. Kwak received an MFA from the University of Southern California in 2014, MAPH from the University of Chicago in 2010, and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007.

https://www.youngjoon.com

Kim Ye (all pronouns, b. 1984, Beijing, China) is a Chinese American interdisciplinary artist whose research-based practice encompasses performance, sculpture, video, installation, text, and community organizing. She received her MFA from UCLA (2012), BA from Pomona College (2007), and has worked as a professional dominatrix in Los Angeles since 2011. Their work engages gendered constructions around power, taboo, and privacy by activating the artist/viewer dynamic to create situations of intimacy and exchange. Treating the body and its immediate surroundings as sites of resistance and aspiration, his praxis draws from frameworks emerging from queer, sex worker, and first-generation communities. Ye has exhibited, screened, and performed widely nationally and internationally at institutions such as The Getty, Wattis Institute, Hammer Museum, Banff Center for Arts, Material Art Fair, and Frieze Film Seoul among others. She is currently on the board of Sex Workers Outreach Project Los Angeles (SWOPLA), and teaches in the Photo & Media department at California Institute of the Arts.

https://www.kimye.com