Jiha Moon

I attended Jiha Moon’s Lecture and show this weekend. She has been living in America for over 10 years and is From South Korea, it seems as though Moon struggles with her ethnic identity because she is obviously not American, and now when she returns to Korea she is considered Americanized and feels like a tourist. I think Moon uses this to her advantage as her paintings are smashed full of cultural references from both countries. She likes the idea that nothing is pure; Moon has no problem admitting that her references are borrowed, though they are chosen for humor or significance. Apparently Moon started as a figurative painter, which I find hard to imagine because her work is quite abstract, thought there are a lot of very tightly rendered areas. I don’t like all of her works, some of them just have too many super bright colors for my liking, but she does some really nice work, and I especially like the pieces that play of different interpretations of language. Often times the titles are kind of snarky, and Moon was quite amusing and clever when speaking. She was also just really great at talking about the work without making it boring or too detailed by mixing in little stories. Pretty much she was adorable and had some really great nuggets of wisdom like “when you trust yourself too much then the paintings get boring.” I think everyone at our school needs to think about that. Moon also thinks that utopia would be boring. At first I was unsure about that statement and then I realized how right she is. What a clever lady.