JIHA MOON


“People have a soft spot for foreign things. I feel that it is because we add our own experience and imagination to the unfamiliar, which can lead us to misunderstanding it,” says the artist Jiha Moon. “It’s a lot like tourism. As a foreigner living in the United States, I often think about what authenticity really means, and I think we often misunderstand it.”

In Moon’s new show of mixed-media works on paper and ceramic sculpture at RYAN LEE gallery, the artist effortlessly melds tropes from disparate sources—including traditional Asian landscape paintings, flickering memes from the Internet, and various highs and lows of American popular culture—into lush compositions that straddle the line between abstraction and representation. The theoretical underpinnings of Moon’s work might rely on slightly shopworn themes from the Asian-American diaspora, but when her compositions gel, the results are vivid and mesmerizing, and the intricacy of her technique can’t help but draw the viewer in. “Ultimately, everyone except ourselves is foreign,” Moon says. “Examining misunderstanding is part of the necessary process of understanding others. I want to share that experience.”

“Jiha Moon: Falk Visiting Artist” runs through April 13 at the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina.

Image courtesy of the artist and RYAN LEE, New York.

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