Weatherspoon Museum, Greensboro, NC
Jan 18, 2014 - Apr 13, 2014
As the Spring 2014 Falk Visiting Artist at the Weatherspoon and the Art Department at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Moon will present a lecture and gallery talk on her work and participate in MFA graduate student critiques.
This exhibition was originally organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia as part of the 2012/13 Working Artist Projects award program. Xandra Eden, Curator of Exhibitions organized the exhibition at the Weatherspoon. Special thanks to the 2013/14 Falk Visiting Artist Committee.
View press release website
By Stephanie Cash, September 17, 2013
“If someone threatens you and you strike a tae kwon do pose, even if you don’t know tae kwon do, they’ll think you do because you’re Asian,” says Jiha Moon. “My work does a similar thing.”
Like many artists who create work outside their native cultures, the 40-year-old Korean-born artist incorporates elements of her original and adopted homes in complex, multivalent works rich with symbolism and intrigue. Asian motifs — peonies, fiery dragon heads and calligraphy — share space with piñatas, the Starbucks mermaid, the Tiger Balm tiger and Martha Stewart scrapbooking stickers. Birds play a big role as well, from Angry Birds, lovebirds and the “Hecho en Mexico” Aztec eagle to Audubon-worthy specimens. Moon layers materials and metaphors in order to upend stereotypes and cultural assumptions, mixing East and West, high and low, fact and fiction.
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The Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia (MOCA GA)
2012/2013 Working Artist Project (WAP)
September 7 - November 2, 2013
Opening Reception:
Friday, September 6th, 6:30-8:30pm

ABOUT Foreign Love
Jiha Moon has been working in three areas for this exhibition: works on paper, ceramic sculptures, and Norigae (traditional Korean clothing accessories, example shown at right) as art objects. She notes that “throughout the entire exhibition, my subject deals with my interests of mixing multiple cultural references (eastern, western and beyond) and playing with the idea of shifting identities. For example, I often switch the colors of familiar objects to something you would not normally see, and I adopt many different styles of paint/line application.”
“There is clearly great depth and diversity in Atlanta’s artistic pool. My selections include three dynamic female artists, all of whom explore the complex merging of abstraction and representation within painting, each in their own singular voice. I look forward to seeing how their exhibitions play a role in the ongoing vitality and plurality of painting today.”
- Julie Rodrigues Widholm
ABOUT the Juror
This year, Julie Rodrigues Widholm, Pamela Alper Associate Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (MCA), came to Atlanta to serve as juror for this round of artists’ submissions. Rodrigues Widholm recently curated Rashid Johnson: Message to Our Folks and is currently organizing Colombian artist Doris Salcedo’s first survey exhibition for Fall 2014 at the MCA and is also co-organizing Amalia Pica’s first American solo museum exhibition with MIT List Visual Art Center, Boston. Since joining the MCA in 1999, she has curated group exhibitions such as Escultura Social: A New Generation of Art from Mexico City, which was accompanied by a bi-lingual catalogue, as well as in-depth presentations of the MCA Collection in Constellations: Paintings from the MCA Collection and MCA Exposed: Defining Moments in Photography, 1967-2007. In addition, she has organized solo exhibitions of dozens of Chicago-based artists including most recently Scott Reeder, Laura Letinsky, Molly Zuckerman-Hartung and Cauleen Smith. Rodrigues Widholm holds an M.A. in Modern Art History, Theory and Criticism from The School of the Art Institute in Chicago and a B.A. in Art History and Political Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
ABOUT WAP
WAP is an awards program to support established visual artists of merit who reside in the metropolitan Atlanta area. This initiative provides an unparalleled level of support for individual artists, expands the Museum’s mission, and promotes Atlanta as a city where artists can live, work, and thrive. As with past years, a guest juror will select three visual artists to receive the Award. Representing our city’s best and brightest; these artists will be supported with an exhibition, promotion, a studio assistant, and a major stipend to create work over the course of the year. This program is supported in large by a grant from The Charles Loridans Foundation with additional funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.
View press release website
Saltworks Gallery, Atlanta, GA
April 14 - May 25, 2012
Opening Reception:
Saturday, April 14, 7-10 PM

Storyteller, 2011
Ink, acrylic, fabric, embroidery patches on Hanji, 25 x 37.5"
SALTWORKS is pleased to present Detourist, our third solo exhibition of Atlanta-based artist Jiha Moon. Moon’s floating landscapes are shifting cultural narratives, playfully blending symbols, materials and techniques to slow down the viewer’s impulse to assume meaning and sometimes mislead by highlighting popular misconceptions or “shortcuts”. Her dynamic paintings skillfully integrate color, mark making, material and iconic imagery to examine the impermanence of cultural identity. In Detourist, Moon cites influences from a variety of origins, ranging from 13th century Taoist painting, American Pop artists, Walt Disney, Dr. Seuss, emoticons to Asian restaurant menus.
Through these works, Moon asks the question: Is the feeling of authenticity only experienced by the tourist? And how does this feeling shift when we see more and know more? Moon understands the influence of appearance and the natural impulse to assign assumptions to the familiar. Working from this knowledge, Moon layers colors, marks, and materials camouflaging their attributes to create multiple meanings and hybrid origins; the works have an unexpectedness of a new world. Using popular symbols to create her mishmash identities, Moon pushes the fast interpretation of the fantastic and nonsense to challenge common misinterpretations. In addition to the paintings and two mixed media works from her 2010 residency at the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Moon has created two installations - Flag and Sack, a wall mounted series of patchwork flags with a crafted resemblance to social and national groups, and Detour, an assemblage of prints and direct screen printing on the wall creating a whimsical display of imagery taken from western fortune cookies.
Jiha Moon is a 2011 recipient of the prestigious Joan Mitchell Foundation Award. She has solo exhibitions at the Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, NC; Cheekwood Museum of Art, Nashville, TN and Rhodes College, Clough-Hanson Gallery, Memphis, TN. She has been featured in group exhibitions at the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, PA; The Drawing Center, New York, NY; Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA; Asia Society, New York, NY and the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta, GA. Moon’s work is included in numerous public collections including the Asia Society, New York, NY; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, NC; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA and the Weatherspoon Museum of Art, Greensboro, NC among others.
Arario Gallery Seoul Samcheong
February 1 - March 3, 2012

Arario Gallery Seoul Samcheong is pleased to present the opening of Springfield, a solo exhibition by American-based artist Jiha Moon, on February 1st 2012. Currently residing in Atlanta, US, Jiha Moon (born in 1973) is one of representative Korean artists with a thriving art practice in America. Springfield presents over 30 various experimental works the artist has produced in the last three years, and has immense significance as the artist’s first solo show in Korea
www.arariogallery.com
by Kriston Capps, Dec. 28, 2011
Atlanta–based painter Jiha Moon nabbed a $25,000 grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation—bringing a big win home for the District.
Moon doesn't live in D.C., but her work appears at Curator's Office, and her roots in the city and community run deep. In 2005, she won the $10,000 Trawick Prize, an annual award for artists in the Washington area, and garnered rave reviews for "Symbioland," a solo show that opened at Curator's just days after the award ceremony. (Here are still more.)
Her fourth solo show at Curator's Office will take place in 2012. In the meantime, Curator's Office director Andrea Pollan will be accompanying Moon to Seoul for a solo exhibition at Arario Gallery, for which Pollan has written the catalog text.
So the District still claims Moon as a favorite daughter. Elsewhere, excellent examples of her work—which span media as well as influences—have appeared at Philadelphia's Fabric Workshop and Museum and New York's Drawing Center, among national and international galleries and institutions.
washingtoncitypaper.com