Korean photographer Mijoo Kim is the second artist in the 12 x 12 artist salon series, which presents 12 artists from North Carolina, the 12th State.

*Photo above: Mijoo Kim, installation view.

April 19- May 15, 2016

Artist Salon and reception April 19, 6pm

Preview Gallery

Shrouds, veils, pattern, absence and presence are vehicles through which photographer Mijoo Kim explores processes of memory and identity. Kim's work challenges important questions about representations of gender and cultural identity, draping female figures in fabrics that enact cultural camouflage. This formal strategy stems from her experiences as a Korean residing in the US for the past seven years and investigating her responses to this relocation. She uses her camera to examine how her portrayal as an anonymous figure visually conforms to American surroundings, but also conveys displacement.

Kim's 12 x 12 exhibition, presents work from two series, "Re-Figure" and "Role Play", which include portrait images of the artist veiled in fabrics and blending into interior environments, as well as landscapes shot in North Carolina in which some memento of marker of presence is left behind. From this, we can build an open-ended story.

About Mijoo Kim

Originally from South Korea, Mijoo Kim holds a BFA with an emphasis in photography from the School of Art Institute of Chicago, IL, a BA with an emphasis in photography from Kyung-II University in South Korea and an MFA from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. She has been a teaching fellow in photography at UNC Chapel Hill and is currently a Visiting Lecturer there. She did her residencies at The Center for Photography at Woodstock and ARPNY in Long Island. For Kim, photography is not only a means of exploring human lives, but also functions as a gateway to memories that chart the past and permeate the present.

About 12 x 12

12 x 12 artist salon series presents 12 artists from North Carolina, the 12th State. Each Salon is a pop-up exhibition and conversation with the artist. The series schedule consists of three exhibitions per spring and fall seasons in 2016 and 2017, beginning March 1st, 2016. At the end of the salons, a group exhibition in our Potter Gallery will bring together all twelve artists.

The twelve artists in the series represent a diversity of artistic practices and cultural backgrounds. At salon events, each artist will share ideas and processes of their studio practice in the midst of recent, new, or site-specific work presented in SECCA's Preview Gallery. Each artist will discuss their experience first-hand, inviting the public to ask questions and to engage in conversation. Like a studio visit, these salon events are a social space for the discovery and discussion, providing invaluable feedback to artists and insights to those who come to experience them.

12 x 12 gives artists from across North Carolina a public platform for continued artistic development and recognition in the place where they live and work, and beyond. At the same time, the series aims to push conversation around contemporary art forward and to consider the significance of localism as a curatorial framework. What does it mean to these artists to be working in the South and Southeast today, especially after the Internet and Globalization?

The 12 x 12 artists were selected by Cora Fisher (Curator of Contemporary Art, SECCA) and four guest jurors: Linda Dougherty (Chief Curator & Curator of Contemporary Art, North Carolina Museum of Art); Lia Newman (Director and Curator of the Van Every/Smith Galleries at Davidson College); Marshall Price (Nancy Hanks Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University); and Mary Anne Redding (Curator, Turchin Center for the Visual Arts).

An arts initiative sponsored by the Flow Foundation