Sunyoung Park ( She/Her )

My work explores the tension between cultural memory and lived experience, with ceramics as the foundation. As a South Korean immigrant in the U.S., I navigate dualities—tradition and innovation, softness and hardness, control and spontaneity, belonging and alienation. These contrasts shape sculptural installations that combine clay with fabric, wood, glass, and found materials, forming a hybrid language of rupture and continuity. In my process, I begin with clay surfaces that act as sites of translation between memory and form. Rooted in Korean craft traditions yet expanded through contemporary approaches, I blur the line between drawing and object. Flowing glazes, matte finishes, and pencil-like marks evoke memory and emotional residue. By pairing soft and hard materials, or ephemeral and permanent states, I construct spaces where domestic, mythical, and bodily references overlap. These material tensions are not decorative; they mirror the psychological weight of crossing cultural, linguistic, and emotional terrains. My goal is to expand the role of ceramics in contemporary practice, emphasizing its ability to carry memory, emotion, and cultural complexity. I aim to create installations that invite empathy and reflection, while positioning ceramics as a medium of resilience, vulnerability, and transformation.

SunYoung Park (b. 1990, South Korea) is an interdisciplinary artist exploring hybridity, memory, and cultural identity through ceramics and mixed media. Her sculptures merge clay with fabric, wood, and botanical elements, blurring boundaries between body and object. She is a 2026 Studio Mass MoCA Fellowship Recipient and a Wassaic Project Fellowship Recipient, and has also held residencies at the Interdisciplinary Ceramic Research Center, University of Kansas; Charlotte Street Foundation; and Clayarch Gimhae Museum. Her work has been exhibited internationally at the Jingdezhen International Ceramic Biennale, the International Contemporary Ceramic Art Triennial in Andenne, Belgium, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art.