Young Grace Cho

BIO

Young Grace Cho (b. 1997) is an artist interested in history-, world-, and identity-making. They graduated from Williams College with a degree in Psychology and Neuroscience, and currently live and work in NYC as a pastry cook and artist. Their work has been featured in recent group exhibitions at Kannski, Reykjavik and Field Projects, NYC.  

ARTIST STATEMENT

My practice spans embroidery, mending, food and transcription. I use the ephemeral archive of internet media as visual material. My work examines the tension between societal promises and outcomes via systems that sustain or inhibit life and the infrastructures and ideologies that maintain them. My practice centers handwork and the memory that found and repurposed materials contain.

Interview with Young Grace Cho

Can you tell us a bit about your background and how you became interested in becoming an artist?

I grew up in Glendale, CA, before that, Minnesota, and before that, Colorado. My mom, Jacqueline Myers-Cho, has been a working artist my entire life and introduced me early to craft fairs and makers markets, SoCal artist Facebook groups, and 2010s Etsy selling. She taught me how to thread a sewing machine and look at color and space. 

Can you tell us about some of your most memorable early influences?

I learned how to draw from tracing manga. I bought a Shonen Jump in middle school and redrew every panel of Bleach that was in it. I began working seriously with textile in college and was into traditional Korean pojagi quilting, the artists of Gee’s Bend, American psalm quilts and the embroidery work of Bispo do Rosario. His show at AS/COA was a highlight of this past year for me.

Where are you currently based and what brought you there? Are there any aspects of this specific location or community that have inspired your work?

I’m based in Brooklyn and work in Manhattan. I live and work among a community of cooks, artists, and makers–I just did a market in Brooklyn selling dongchimi that I made in my apartment and the vendors I met in that space are representative of many people I know here–incredibly talented, principled people, who act on their aspirations for better. This environment informs my work, and my own aspirations. 

What is your studio space like? What makes your space unique to you?

My studio space is my living room and home kitchen. I draw and sew in my living room and cut and arrange fabric on the floor. A lot of my work is done sitting on the floor. I dye fabric in a large stock pot in my kitchen and dry it hanging from the shower door. My partner and I got a mid-century desk in pieces off Craigslist a couple years ago from an apartment on Canal St. for $50. We refinished and reassembled it and this is where I keep piles and piles of thread.

What is a typical day like? If you don't have a typical day, what is an ideal day? Do you work in large chunks of time, or throughout the day?

I work in the afternoons and evenings through the night, usually up until I go to sleep. The kind of work I make is very labor-intensive and I never really feel like I have enough time to make it. 

What medium/media are you working in right now? What draws you to this particular material or method?

I’m working in hand embroidery on found textiles, with a combination of quilting and mending. The actual motions of embroidery are what initially drew me to the method and are what keep me interested. The experience of holding and transforming textile and constantly adjusting tension feels like a process of gradually understanding material. I don’t wash the second-hand textiles I’m working with and the scents of these materials transfer onto my hands while I’m working with them.  

Can you talk about some of the ongoing interests, imagery, and concepts that have informed your process and body of work over time? How do you anticipate your work progressing in the future?

I have worked a lot in the past with online real estate listings, satellite imagery, and user photos from Google Maps and Yelp. It’s incredible how much visual information you can get on a place you’ve never been, or a space that you haven’t returned to in years. I approached this in a very personal way in a couple works. 

Two of these embroideries were of places that my family used to live, including our home that was foreclosed in 2007, which I haven’t seen since we left. The second was our apartment in Glendale that we lived in for years. The landlord did almost no maintenance on that apartment during the 9 years that my parents were there. My dad did his first home improvement project in the bathroom, trying to replace the fucked up linoleum with press-on tiles. He did a pretty bad job and the landlord totally remodeled the bathroom once my parents moved out. I revisited both of my former homes digitally, on platforms available to anyone with internet access, that also display full purchase and rental records for the properties.

Do you pursue any collaborations, projects, or careers in addition to your studio practice? If so, can you tell us more about those projects, and are there connections between your studio practice and these endeavors?

I work full-time in pastry at a restaurant. The bulk of my job is baking, but a lot of it is maintenance and organization, which honestly is as enjoyable as making a cake. I really like cleaning flour bins especially. All of these tasks, prepping, baking, cleaning, are incredibly repetitive, both in how often we have to do them and the actual motions. In this way, the work is very similar to sewing. 

I spend a lot of time thinking about food production and labor and traditional food practices, and these themes have made their way into my textile work. A series that I’ve been working on concerns DIY doenjang making and includes extensive transcriptions of recipes, blogs, and self-published writing of these makers.   

Can you share some of your recent influences? Are there specific works—from visual art, literature, film, or music — that are important to you?

I’ve recently been working with images from Ebay listings of apparel and patches issued to American veterans of the Korean War, particularly the slogans and visual representations of the peninsula. I have also been working with records of bones that have resurfaced in north/south Korean border towns after heavy floods.

Can you elaborate on a recent work of yours, and tell us the story of how it came to be?

My recent works examine the traditional Korean fermentation practice of doenjang/meju through hand-embroidered transcriptions. One is an apron made from a textile that my partner’s grandmother saved to be used as a rag. I embroidered it with an archived blog post of a 2010 daily meal log of a DIY doenjang blogger and reconstructed it as a wearable apron.

Have you overcome any memorable roadblocks or struggles in your practice that you could share with us?

I was hesitant for a long time to seriously consider a path as an artist because of the financial precarity from my mom’s art career. This instability affected every facet of my childhood and still affects my life today. Eventually, I realized that this is something that I’m going to do no matter what, so I might as well pursue it as if I’m going to succeed.

Who are some contemporary artists you’re excited about? Is there a recent exhibition that stood out to you?

Jagdeep Raina’s embroidery work, which is both an inspiration and unlike anything anyone else is doing. I’m so impressed by Tau Lewis and Esteban Ramón Pérez who are both working with leather at a spectacular scale. Pallavi Sen’s garden at the Clark was a part of one of my favorite shows that I saw this year and an iteration of a work that I’ve had the joy of seeing change and grow over the last few years. Shadow Comms/Shiva Addanki’s paintings on paper are incredible. I’ve also been thinking about Thomas Kong who passed this year, who had an amazing daily collage practice.

Do you have any tips or advice that someone has shared with you that you have found particularly helpful?

Taking care of and intentionally strengthening your body, particularly your hands and wrists. This is becoming increasingly important to me with repetitive motions and working with thick materials and will make all the difference however many decades from now I’m still sewing.

What are you working on in the studio right now? What’s coming up next for you?

At the beginning of the new year, I’m going to start the year-long process of making doenjang as an experiment in using meju as a sculptural material and a way to explore organic transformation and long-form process.

To find out more about Young Grace Cho check out their website and Instagram.