about Jiwon Chloe Han

Jiwon Chloe Han is a visual artist working in drawing and painting. Born and raised in Gwangju, South Korea, Han moved to the US as an adolescent. This separation from her home country greatly influences Han’s practice, inspiring her to explore themes of loss, longing, and the search for belonging in her work. Originally taught art by her grandfather, a calligrapher, Han draws inspiration in large part from traditional Korean art, especially from the Chosun Dynasty. She also looks to modern Western artists like Francis Bacon.

Han's drawing practice stems from her love of the immediacy and physicality of the medium. She makes dreamscapes with common visual motifs pulled from the landscape, such as the reflection of the moon on water, jagged cliffsides, and mountain peaks. She is interested in how absence denotes presence and how darkness denotes light. 

Additionally, Han often incorporates her own writing into her work through bookmaking, writing, and painting. Her poetry and prose appear oftentimes exclusively in Korean, which raises questions about translation, vulnerability, and target audience. These works change context in relation to her viewers, Korean, American, or Korean-American.

Han’s works are quiet reflections on what it means to be home. Her immersive and often vertical images act as portals, or doorways, between our physical reality and our own internal world. The physical landscape acts as a metaphor for the psychological one, as Han plays with perspective, space, and nonlinear time.