Meet Laura Hyunjhee Kim | Multimedia Artist & Educator

We had the good fortune of connecting with Laura Hyunjhee Kim and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Laura Hyunjhee, why did you decide to pursue a creative path?
There is something extremely humbling and beautiful about not knowing and oscillating within the uncertainties of what human life offers. In retrospect, I’ve always been someone who has been curious about humans, nonhumans, things, objects, spaces and places that shape creativity and trigger our imagination to view the world askew—how as humans we language and try so hard to sense-make and make-sense of who we are and where our place is within this world. Thus, I think rather than a pursuit, my artistic career has found me, and perhaps pursued me.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I don’t believe there is such a thing as a professional artist, but there is a way to use the practicalities of professionalism as a tool to amplify creative output. When I was in grad school at the San Francisco Art Institute, my mentor Tony Labat once mentioned, “What do we mean by art ‘practice’? I mean, do we need a license to make art?” Somewhat this question always stuck with me. In a contemporary artworld, that is often driven by capital, whether financial or popularity (ie. brand identity as an artist who waves the wand of social clout), it is easy to slip and fix oneself within a given linear narrative of how art is defined, rather than what it can be, by becoming another cog in the machine competing for visibility and chasing the dream of others. By no means am I special for what I creatively contribute to the world, but I think what I, as a performance-based thinking-through-maker and educator, can offer is ideas as such, that if you start questioning everything around you, even what we call art, nothing will look the same as it is.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
This may sound quite mundane, but I would take them to the Oak Point Park & Nature Preserve and then perhaps HMart in Plano to buy groceries and cook a good meal. Hailing from Boulder, Colorado, I think the best conversations come from walking, talking, and spending time experiencing both what we consider natural and artificial as humans—one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned from relocating to the greater DFW area.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
In this current moment of time, sitting in my lawn chair, basking under the sun, listening to the machinic drone of air conditioning in Richardson, Texas, I would like to dedicate my shoutout to pigeons. Pigeons have been a living subject of study for me lately, and I think my shoutout should be dedicated to their ways of knowing and navigating the world. This may sound a bit absurd, but I believe the unassuming nature of pigeons as species that are enmeshed with human ways of living, especially how they occupy our space, and therefore influence our thought patterns, deserve a bit of recognition.

Website: http://www.lauraonsale.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lauraonsale/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauraonsale/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/lauraonsale

Other: https://vimeo.com/lhk

Image Credits
Cosmocrane (Neon Was Never Brighter, Kadist SF & Chinatown Media & Arts Collaborative, San Francisco, CA, Performance, 2022), Beyond All Polarities, We Are _____ (Collaboration with Surabhi Saraf & Ashwini Bhat, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA, Performance Installation, 2022), Towards Pigeonology & Martha: A Pigeonological Study for an Endling (Matter of Lives, Collaboration with Kevin Sweet, Meta Forte, Venice, Italy, Performance Workshop & Exhibition, 2022), Included photos taken by Paul Henry Smith, Dallis Willard, Heesoo Kwon, and courtesy of artist.