With a deceptively lighthearted touch, Jiha Moon (b. 1973, South Korea) examines the entanglements of, as she puts it, “globalization, identity, and the visual information overload of contemporary society.” Incorporating painting, drawing, collaged Hanji paper, and ceramics, One An Other is now on view in the museum lobby. It represents the most ambitious site-specific installation to date by Moon, who received her MFA degree at the University of Iowa in 2002.
On April 5, 2023, the Board of Trustees of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation approved the awarding of Guggenheim Fellowships to a diverse group of 171 exceptional individuals. Chosen from a rigorous application and peer review process out of almost 2,500 applicants, these successful applicants were appointed on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise.
During this extraordinary moment in time, we asked writers, musicians, curators, and innovators to reflect on influence, memory, language, shared spaces, and the power of poetry to bring us together.
The artist talks about creating vibrant celebrations of Asian identity in her large yellow paintings.
By Jiha Moon and Hua Xi
Jiha Moon’s evocative, sumptuous paintings are dynamic meditations on cultural identity. Her Yellowave series invites viewers to reconsider the color yellow, with its supersaturated neons that spill across the canvas in sweeping, freeform strokes, interrupted by detailed drawings of pagodas, trees, animals, and fruit. At once ancient and contemporary, these symbols reference both Eastern and Western culture. They are also a manifestation of Moon’s diasporic identity: she grew up in Korea and currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
