Joolee Kang

Kang’s work appears to be delicate, ornamental drawings presented in crisp white frames. If one looks more closely, however, the drawings reveal grotesque and mutated flora and fauna. Often presented as table arrangements one might see in the Victorian era or exquisite bonsai trees, they teem with two-mouthed fish, three-footed birds, and hairless mammals. The line separating animals from plants has all but disappeared, some forms having been completely camouflaged. There’s a sense of foreboding inherent in these somewhat dark drawings, done with a black Bic ballpoint pen. At once delicate and subtle they are also intensely overwrought and obsessive.

Kang comments on her drawings and sculpture, “My works are a metaphor for the close bond between humanity and nature, which are often thought of as being in diametrical opposition, or a relationship of subordination, but are in fact woven together like a single piece of fabric.”

JooLee Kang was born in South Korea and educated in Boston, a 2011 graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/Tufts University program. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2013 SMFA Traveling Fellowship, a St. Botolph Club Artist Grant, a Massachusetts Cultural Council Award in Drawing, and a Dana Pond Award in Painting. In 2018 she was the artist-in-residence at the Gyeonggi Creation Center in Gyeonggi-do, Korea and received a Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture Artist Grant.

“I focus on change of ecological environment, transition of living organism, and evolution, created inevitably, to survive together. I interpret complicated interaction between human and nature in various perspectives, ask for understanding and consideration of our possibility and dignity through pen drawing and mixed installation.” - JooLee Kang