Rising Stars: SuJung Jo

My work & I

I am a Brooklyn-based artist who works with photography, painting, wood working and sculpture. Because I have suffered from migraines since childhood, and because I went through cancer, I am deeply interested in how vulnerable human life is.

Through my practice, I visualize the fragility that I find. I make it tangible in order to confront it. Simultaneously, my instinct is to withhold my weaknesses, which leads to shielded, veiled, fragmented, and distorted images, which I achieve through stitching, painting, and sculpting. My current body of work lies in the illusion created by the three-dimensionality of layered organza, which allows for a topographical perspective on fragility.

My work is a combination of my acceptance and resistance to my own vulnerability. My strategy in using the organza to veil the images is not just a psychological strategy. It is also an innovative growth in my approach to photography, and I have come to realize that although some of my choices in approach are defensive, others are creative in their way of finding new and fresher ways to communicate with photography, especially in the attempt to stretch a two-dimensional art form into an interface with the three-dimensional possibilities of sculpture.