“Yellow Womanhood” by GU Studio Art Alumna Julia Kwon, at The Honfleur Gallery

Julia Kwon creates ruptures within traditional Korean textile to comment on gender and ethnicity. The artist draws inspiration from Korean patchwork object-wrapping cloth called bojagi, which was historically a creative outlet for women who had limited contact with the outside world. Kwon creates textile works in the format of bojagi to explore notions of tradition, craft, and feminized labor. Through disrupting the Korean textiles and treating the human-scale figures like objects, she not only expresses the embodied experience of objectification, tokenism, and whitewashing, but also challenges preexisting notions of what it means to be Korean and feminine. Kwon’s work is a celebration of her cultural background as well as a commentary on the complexities of constructing identity within the contemporary context of globalism, cultural hybridity, and intersectionality.

Yellow Womanhood runs from November 22nd through December in The Honfleur Gallery, at 1241 Good Hope Rd SE, Washington DC 20020. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday by appointment.