Eunnam Hong Lives and works in New York, b. 1979, Gangwon-do, South Korea

Living and working in New York, Eunnam Hong came to the art world through an unconventional path following a career in fashion and advertising. Contemplative of these worlds, her figurative paintings, executed in oil on linen, engage in a vivid aesthetic tension between self-representation, autofiction, and uncanny depictions of domestic settings. In her light-flooded portraits, influenced by the history of cinema and photography, she presents multiple versions of herself – ambiguous, uniformed protagonists made up in wigs and costumes. These figures often interact with codified, recurring objects, exploring cultural otherness and dualities between boredom, agency, temptation, and anonymity. Time, characters, and events overlap through a “constant, simultaneous process without beginning, middle, and end.”

Embodying the propensity of masks to reveal and conceal, Hong’s anesthetized “second selves” or “clones” portray a range of inner states, reflecting the presence of “unknown” or “unseen” actors. Their hair and skin, often platinum and marble-like, speak to mass-produced ideals of beauty, genres of self-broadcasting, and gender roles, evoking environments where freedom and constriction coexist. Hong’s architectural elements – doorways, stairwells, and passages – serve as slightly askew stages of control, perfectionism, and gender play. Choices and desires are quietly enacted across familiar settings in which “good and evil are in a real-time crisis.”

Eunnam Hong (b. 1979, Gangwon-do, South Korea) lives and works in New York.

Hong graduated from the Seoul Institute of the Arts. Recent solo exhibitions have been held at Mendes Wood DM, Brussels (2024); Lubov Gallery, New York (2023); and de boer, Los Angeles (2022). Her work has also been featured in group shows at Four One Nine, San Francisco (2024); K11 + Art-Bureau, Shanghai (2024); Champ Lacombe, Biarritz (2023); Lyles & King, New York (2023); and de boer, Los Angeles (2022). Hong’s work is part of the collection of the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Miami.