Artist Young Joon Kwak Invites Audiences to the ‘Resisterhood’ with Glimmering Bejeweled Sculptures and Neon Works

Editor’s Note: This story is part of Newsmakers, an ARTnews series where we interview the movers and shakers who are making change in the art world.

Welcome to the resistorhood.

That’s the premise of Young Joon Kwak’s current solo exhibition, “RESISTERHOOD,” at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art in New York. Consisting of work made over the past 10 years, including new commissions, the show begins outside the LLM with a series of neon works displayed in the museum’s window spaces. An elegantly drawn hand in red goes from two fingers raised to a fist. A blue hand goes from an upright stop motion to a limp wrist. Next to these is a scrawled text work that displays various configurations of the word “resisterhood,” like “resist” and “sisterhood.”

On view inside are a series of dazzling bejeweled sculptures that glimmer and reflect and refract the light. There’s an instant, recognizable beauty and glamour to these pieces. On the inverse, Kwak has embedded casts of parts of their body. One shows the face of a pensive Kwak, perhaps lost in thought. Elsewhere are body prints and videos in which we see different expressions of Kwak’s queer trans body. In a moment where trans rights are being rolled back across the country, after a decade of almost hypervisibility, “RESISTERHOOD” is an indeed an act of resistance and a powerful, moving display of art that is both formally and politically adept.

To learn more about the exhibition, ARTnews spoke to the Los Angeles–based artist via Zoom.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity and concision.

ARTnews: How did you approach the making of your solo show at the Leslie Lohman Museum?

Young Joon Kwak: After [head curator] Stamatina Gregory and [executive director] Alyssa Nitchun offered me the show, I started thinking through the legacy of the institution in terms of queer, LGBTQ+ history and art history. They are creating a queer art history, in a way, because it’s the world’s only LGBTQIA+ museum dedicated to not only showing art by queer artists, but collecting it. They have an extensive archive. That collection, what they show, what they hold on to, and what’s in their archive means something for queer history, for queer culture, for our culture. The invitation felt really meaningful. But the legacy of the museum and its history is one of a traditionally more cis white male space. And on the other hand, the museum is now run by these badass queer women who are committed to shifting things around in the museum, making it more open, expansive, and taking risks in showing queer, trans, and POC artists and giving them solo exhibitions. It’s a small institution that has been so supportive and the amount of labor and love that they put into their work there—I just wanted to do right by that. I saw that as an opportunity to make something that would be meaningful for our community.

In the exhibition you’re showing these bejeweled sculptures that behind them hide casts of your face. Can you talk about how you developed this body of work, which you also showed in the 2023 Made in L.A. biennal?

I call them my “chameleon” body of work. It is like a continuing body of work, too. I was thinking a lot about camouflage and the strategies for queer and trans survival as well as survival for folks from other marginalized communities, and how masking, camouflage, and even code-switching play into that. I did some research on chameleons and found out the way in which they change the color of their skin and camouflage within their environment is each skin cell has little nanocrystals called iridophores. So these iridescent nanocrystals can reflect any wavelength of light and color in their environment. And, contrary to some thoughts about camouflage just being a means of hiding, it’s a little bit queer—it’s when they get excited, like when a male sees another male, that their skin stretches, exposing their skin and these iridophores to any color in the spectrum in their environment.

Making those works for the Made in L.A. biennial at the Hammer Museum, I knew a broader public would engage with my work in a way that maybe it hasn’t in the past. I thought a lot about how I wanted people who are not queer, people who are not trans, maybe even people who would see my body or other trans bodies on the street and have an impulse to turn away—not just reacting with anger or hate but that simple impulse to turn away from trans issues even if that somebody might think they’re liberal and tolerant—I thought about how those viewers would encounter these pieces. The pieces are bejeweled to draw them closer, to seduce them almost. The abstracted, camouflage-like patterns are not immediately recognizable as a way to invite viewers to engage with it and have an extended, delayed moment of recognizing what it is, moving around it, and having this experience of engaging with these bodies that is more active, prolonged, and involving a sense of discovery. And when they turn the corner, they can have this moment of realization that they’ve had this intimate experience with a trans body, an embodied experience of what it means to exist and navigate the world as a trans body, in a way.

But also, one of the cast sculptures in that exhibition is of a cis women’s nine-month pregnant belly because I wanted to bring an unexpected body into this conversation of transness, drawing this connection to the fact that all of our bodies are transitioning in one way or another. Thinking about this nine-month pregnant woman as a transitioning body, one that all of us could relate to. I was thinking about it as this opportunity to connect with people who I normally wouldn’t have the opportunity to connect with in my everyday encounters, and maybe who wouldn’t want to connect with me—maybe I wouldn’t want to connect with them initially either. But that’s the power of art, too, that space to create these connections across boundaries of difference in unexpected ways. It’s a proxy for my body and the body of somebody else, and being able to connect in a different way. The titles of each of these sculptures start with To refuse looking away from our transitioning bodies, and the paintings [that are also part of this body of work] start with To see yourself reflected in our chameleonic transformations. These sculptures were really about provoking a different kind of intimate encounter and experience of our bodies with transness.

The Leslie-Lohman show also includes this very beautiful body print that is inspired by David Hammons’s body prints from the late ’60s and ’70s. Can you talk about that work and why you wanted to take up that form?

Those prints are another way in which I wanted to depart from a conventional representation of a body in a way. Those prints are made by using the body casts essentially as rubber stamps. So, these prints are both faithful to the original body but also it deviates from its original form in a way that I think opens the representation of this body to projection and one’s own imagination. It becomes more open, for people to see themselves in the work. The print of two queer Korean women kissing has an open-endedness to it, the further abstract quality of it, the way that there’s so much negative space. I think of those negative spaces as spaces and opportunities for people to see themselves, complete the images, or imagine what these bodies could be like. It could be two men. It could be a man and a woman. It could be people of any race. I think about it as a move of generosity and inclusion for people.

There is such a generosity to this work. Why do you feel like it is so important to offer these spaces in which people can imagine their own body in the work or bring to the work whatever it is they want to?

Isn’t there enough exclusion? I don’t want to merely respond to exclusion through further alienation. I want to experiment and explore with the possibilities for how art can connect differently between different groups of people to bring us closer together. People can discover new ways of relating to our bodies or different ways of thinking about transness or queerness in ways that aren’t so scary or alienating for them but that feel inviting and welcoming.

Human, maybe too?

Yeah. A lot of the work is about how can I respond differently, and provoke a different response to transness rather than just fear and violence. All the harmful effects of this moment of recognition and then objectification of queer and trans bodies.

How did you come to name the show “Resisterhood”?

First, there’s “resist” in the title. Resistance and refusal are both part of my work in many ways. Formally, when it comes to historical conventions of masculine, modern sculpture. And then a resistance toward conventions of representation and visibility and the politics surrounding that. All the casts that I make are what I call “invert casts” that are the impressions of bodies that are no longer there. There’s absence rather than a more whole, singular complete image or form of a body.

And then, I think about the “sisterhood” aspect to it. There’s so much about that connection and collectivity. This work is so much a love letter to my community, to other queer and trans folks. Having this show at the museum, I see my artwork and myself as part of a larger movement. I think of it as a kind of resistance. For the neon work outside [in the museum’s window spaces], I thought about the different words that would appear and shine: “resist,” “resist sister,” “resister,” “sister,” “sisterhood,” “resisterhood.” Maybe that could be both uplifting and a call to action. It also can an affirming embrace.

Can you talk more about why you think it’s so important to stage an exhibition like this at this moment? What do you hope people take away from the exhibition?

First and foremost, I just want queer and trans people and people who have non-normative bodies to not feel so alone or feel hopeless during this time, but to feel felt, affirmed, and seen as shimmering bodies. And having this transformative potential as being empowering. What’s at stake for me, or the urgency of the show, is that I really do believe that in the face of destruction and devastation, and in the face of very real attempts at erasing our existence, erasing the presence of trans bodies, this is a statement that our bodies, our care for each other, our community, and our support exists and endures even through absence. I want to assert that queer and trans presence in a way. Through that love and care, and ephemerality and movement over permanence and rigidity. Transformation beyond representation, too. They can never erase us. We’re just going to keep transforming and shining.

I’m very cognizant of the fact that this is for the LGBTQIA+ community, being in a queer museum. That makes me feel so good. At the opening, just to be surrounded by queer and trans folks felt not just affirming, but we were so affirming of each other. It was such a joyful occasion, and I’ve never felt such an outpouring of love and support for my work at an opening of an exhibition of mine before in such a way. It just felt so special. I want it to be this inviting and welcoming space within a queer institution for a broader public to come in. My hope is that different folks feel welcomed. As much as this work is for my community, I hope this artwork can spark some empathy or new forms of connection, creating a space where we can all feel closer during times when I and other people feel really divided from each other.

Another part of your practice is Mutant Salon, which you think of as a “queer-transfem-BIPOC collective beauty salon and collaborative art and performance platform,” and your role as the lead performer of the drag-electronic-dance-noise band Xina Xurner. It’s mentioned in the wall text but not represented in the exhibition. How do you think that performance and music work connect to the physical objects are in the museum show?

One of the things about performance is that it involves my body. That is very different from my body as it exists in the sculptures in the show because there are some people who will just not engage with my body in the world. So, the possibilities and opportunities are different in these different contexts. I’m excited about all of these different ways of connecting with different people across different boundaries. I realize that these mediums can do different things and reach different audiences. This work is taking place in this particular institutional context and it may reach a different kind of public than my Xina Xurner performances in punk underground spaces where it’s just other queer and trans punks who will see the work. But I still get so much out of that. It brings me so much life. And I really need that too. I need to do Xina Xurner. I need to be in community with other freaks. I need to feel affirmed in that way, in a really immediate way. It’s therapeutic. It affords me that real life, lived experience of this collective transformation and support that I want to transfigure in a way with my gallery and museum work. I think a lot about these different contexts and what I can do to the best of my ability in these different contexts.

I mentioned before how certain people just won’t engage with my body on the street, but then, in the gallery, they will via these sculptures, via these proxies for my body, thinking about it through different materials and just within the history of sculpture. That’s why the title of some of these sculptures is To refuse looking away from our transitioning bodies. That’s what my institutional and gallery work allows me to achieve in a way that my performance work doesn’t. But that performance work also affords me something else that’s totally vital for me. That performance interaction informs my sculpture. I think about this performative interaction between audience members or viewers and the works in the exhibition. Performance is much more of a space of wildness and chaos for me, whereas the works in my exhibitions are very experimental, but they’re also very calculated and labored on. I’m considering the viewer. As an art viewer myself, that would get me to engage more with the work if I felt considered. I want people to engage with the work and with transness. In my practice, I don’t want to engage with just one public or one audience. I think that has to do with this experience of feeling trapped in a box, too, or being stared at. I already have to contend with being put in certain boxes outside of my will all the time.

Is there anything else you want to add?

I want to invite queer and trans folks, as well as other folks too, to have their own experience of the work. Everything that I’m saying isn’t prescriptive about what the proper experience, interpretation, or meaning of the work should be for the viewer. Again, I want there to be space for people to project themselves into it. That then will only speak to the multiplicity of queerness and transness of the new forms of relationality, of connecting with us rather than further dividing us.

These are scary times that we live in, and I feel that there’s this demand for us to be scared, to hide, or to wither away or something. I want to resist that impulse too. We’re on a fucking mission to get a message out there of protection, support, and validation for queer and trans folks right now.