Category Archives: KAFA Archive

KAFA’s 30th Anniversary Party

December 10, 2019

Thank you to everyone who attended our smashing 30th Anniversary Holiday Party, and an incredibly huge thank you to Hyon Chough for hosting it at her one-of-a-kind residence. We were joined by eight out of sixteen awardees, five of which traveled from out of state! Artists in attendance were (left to right): Yun Dong Nam (1992), Sook Jin Jo (1994), Yunhee Min (1996), Maria Park (2002), Jena H. Kim (2004), Kakyoung Lee (2010), Olga Lah (2014), Robert Rhee (2016).

Legendary curator Howard Fox gave remarks to the attendees, and we have permission to share his glowing speech here. During the party, he put away his notes and spoke from his heart, which was incredibly special.

“…A diverse range of artists, all of Korean heritage working in the US, but participating in a highly cosmopolitan, global art context.

It’s wonderful to see so many of you here this evening, especially those of you founding members whom I’ve known since I first served as an awards juror in 1993- that’s 26 years! More than a quarter century!!! I’m getting old. For that matter, I guess a number of us are getting old.

But with that age comes the recognition that times have changed. Groups of international artists working in the United States- or in many other countries where they were not originally born- do not present themselves fundamentally as ethnic groups maintaining ancient traditions in their new diaspora. Rather, they consider themselves as uniquely creative individuals operating in an international context; if their art reflects an awareness of their native cultural traditions, fine; If not, that’s fine too. The international art community of galleries, museums, art publications, the internet, and most important of all the artists themselves are immensely vital, communicative, and creative ocean that all continents draw upon for intellectual stimulation, cultural understanding, and pure aesthetic pleasure.

We’re here tonight to express our thanks to all artists working around the world, and especially to KAFA for recognizing the numerous artists it has supported, some of whom are here with us tonight.

And now about KAFA itself. The founding members of KAFA were astute- both idealistic and wise- in their recognition that transnational cultural interaction in a newly global art world was the new, not the former, side of history, and they established an unrestricted grant to encourage artists of Korean heritage in the United States (whether Korean-born or American-born, or who migrated here from yet another country) to pursue their own art and if bi-cultural background. KAFA is cosmopolitan- international, multicultural, and inclusive, in its embrace and its support for the visual arts ranging from painting, to sculpture, to performance art, to site-specific installation, to video, to animation.

That they have recognized the diverse insights, inquiries, and questions of so many talented artists reflects very well on the sterling aspirations of KAFA’s founding members. That KAFA has for thirty years played such a significant role in the Korean-American artistic community is a testament to its ongoing and newer supports- and most especially!- to the many talented visual artists supported by KAFA’s supporters and its broadly representative selection committees of art world professionals- scholars, educators, museum curators, critics, and- perhaps most important- other artists.

Please join me in applauding the artists, the KAFA board, and yourselves as friends and supporters of the Korea Arts Foundation of America- and also our wonderful host Hyon Chough, for her always gracious and warm hospitality. Thank you all for your support of KAFA’s mission.”

-Howard Fox

You can enjoy photos of the KAFA 30th Anniversary Party by Sara Pooley here.

Robert Rhee Opening at KCCLA

November 15, 2019

Korea Arts Foundation of America (KAFA) & Korean Cultural Center, Los Angeles (KCCLA) proudly present the “The 16th Korea Arts Foundation of America Award Recipient Exhibition: All of the Above,” which will take place from November 8th to November 22nd, 2019 at the Korean Cultural Center Art Gallery, located at 5505 Wilshire Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90036.

The Korean Cultural Center Los Angeles (KCCLA) is a hybrid space with multiple forms of cultural programs. Operated by the Korean government’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the KCCLA has a broad mandate: it offers Korean language classes, cultural heritage workshops and culinary seminars, job fairs, traditional dance workshops, Taekwondo programs, and curated exhibitions on Korean history, popular culture, and visual art.
The populations served by the KCCLA’s range of offerings is equally eclectic: primary schools, artists associations, the LAPD and US Army, researchers and universities, Los Angeles municipal governments, tourists and more. One need only peruse the KCCLA’s calendar of offerings to get a sense of it as a well-used multipurpose space.
Robert Rhee’s solo exhibition, “All of the Above,” takes its cues from the KCCLA and is interested in the gestural qualities of shared use and negotiation. Conceived of as a sequence of formations around the KCCLA’s most shared resource—a fleet of folding chairs—the exhibition responds to the processes of the space, which will serve as both a gallery and a Korean language classroom.
The mobile architecture of the folding chair enacts states of attendance: gathering, resting, migrating, as well as being absent. The shared space of the folding chair is not repurposed for the exhibition but rather, in the spirit of the KCCLA, more actively multipurposed and presented in its mixed use.
Rhee’s sculptures utilize cultivated materials and the latent human gestures they carry. In Occupations of Uninhabited Space gourds are grown inside rigid forms which forecast and reroute their growth. The negotiations between gourd and forecast arise out of the cultivation process and take on significance in relation to it. Typecasts visualizes the farming and propagation of stable types as expended energy.

Using a modified burnout casting process this new series of bronze sculptures draws a connection between casting and cultivating. The typecast names a kind of cultivation that feeds individuals back into their types. The term ’typecast’ is borrowed from performance and describes the repeated casting of an actor in the same type of role. Attending the point-of-view of the typecast actor, Rhee focuses his attention on internal dialogue, constructed continuity, releasement. The exhibition is open to the public and the show will run until November 22nd, 2019. All of the Above is the 16th Korea Arts Foundation of America (KAFA) Award Recipient Exhibition. KAFA is a non-profit, public benefit organization in the Los Angeles area with a mission to promote creativity, research, and exhibitions in the arts. Funding and support for this exhibition has been provided by KAFA and the Korean Cultural Center Los Angeles.

Robert Rhee (American, b. 1982, Bronx, New York) lives and works in Seattle. His work has been exhibited nationally at the Portland Museum of Art, Oregon; the Hunterdon Art Museum, New Jersey; White Columns, New York; the Fort Worth Contemporary Gallery, Texas; and the Korean Cultural Center Los Angeles, California and internationally at the 10th Berlin Biennale, KW Institute for Art, Germany; and the Ilmin Museum of Art, South Korea. In 2018 he was awarded the Korea Arts Foundation of America Award for Visual Art and was nominated for a Stranger Genius award in 2016. He received his BA from Yale University and MFA from Columbia University, and is currently an Assistant Professor at Cornish College of the Arts.

From the KAFA Archive

February 15, 2019

In February 1992, KAFA was featured in the 23rd Volume of “The Ladies Joong-Ang.” Enjoy these images from the magazine, which our current President Mrs. Oh saved all of these years! KAFA gave its first grant to Yun-Dong Nam in 1992.

 

(pictured left to right Mrs. Kyungja Oh and Mrs. Sookie Huskey at Hoon Kwack’s studio)