Jesse Chun

Berkeley | Jesse Chun is included in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: Multiple Offerings, on view at BAMPFA (@bampfa ) through April 19, 2026. Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: Multiple Offerings is the first retrospective in twenty-five years dedicated to the groundbreaking work of the artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (b. 1951, Busan, South Korea; d. 1982, New York City). Cha produced an expansive range of works across text-based media, video, and performance, including her posthumously published book, Dictée (1982). The artist’s interdisciplinary practice gave shape to the experimental art scenes in San Francisco, New York City, and beyond. 시: concrete poem, stanza (for all the uninherited and inherited time travelers that hum through the slivers), 2025, graphite on hand-cut, color ottchil painted hanji, aluminum frame 📸: Chris Grunder

Seoul | Recent works by Jesse Chun are included in Echoing the Shadow at Realation Space through September 30th! Curated by Sung woo Kim (@kim.sung_woo ) Open Wednesday-Sunday, 11 am-7pm 46 Bongeunsa-ro 114-gil, Gangnam District, Seoul Echoing the Shadow does not regard the forms and figures obtained through visual language as mere rhetorical aesthetics. Rather, they emerge as the outcome of practices that engage with discourse, invoking layers of sensation that operate prior to—or beyond—language itself. Within the exhibition, ambiguity, rupture, and fragmentation function as forces that unsettle existing structures of interpretation, disturbing the boundaries of linguistic regulation. Moreover, forms outside of language—such as sound, rhythm, repetition, intervals, and discontinuity—reveal affective moments that elude the grasp of established cognitive frameworks. 📸: CJY Art Studio Organized by SYR Main Sponsored by Art Busan (@artbusan ) Venue Sponsored by Relation Space (@realation.space )

Los Angeles | Frieze opens to VIP’s tomorrow, Thursday, February 20th! We will be showing works by Carolina Caycedo, Danielle Dean, Gala Porras-Kim, Jesse Chun, and Suki Seokyeong Kang. Jesse Chun draws from an inheritance—Korean shamanic papercutting—to make her own abstract language in works entitled 시: concrete poem. The form of papercutting, traditionally used to communicate across time and place during ceremonies and as a talisman for protection, was taught to Chun by a local shaman in Korea. Chun reinterprets this tradition to make her own asemic writing that draws from the diasporic and cosmic conditions of language. Assiduously lining Korean mulberry paper in graphite, a repetitive practice to achieve a meditative state, the resulting works are portals, communing with the past and alternate worlds/selves. Jesse Chun, 시: concrete poem (no.102724), 2024, graphite on hand-cut ottchil dyed hanji, aluminum frame 📷: Paul Salveson

My film, O dust, is screening this Saturday @carnegiemuseumofart curated by the brilliant @astriasuparak alongside @david_blandy_ @coelocanthe @suneil_sanzgiri @jonelle.twum @luyangasia @marie_watt_studio with introduction by @liz_sr_park 🕯️ Language is woefully insufficient. “The limits of language are the limits of my world” (Wittgenstein). Intonation can reverse the meaning of a phrase, and there are ways to communicate without words. “Loud silences of pain, defiance, endurance, poetics. A silence that sings refusal,” observes Jonelle Twum. Speech trailing off, indicating words left unsaid; perhaps doubt setting in… Lapses of time, a pause (dot, dot, dot) An indeterminate amount of words omitted or disappeared […] “What is liberation when so much has already been taken?” asks Suneil Sanzgiri’s father. He tours a virtual rendering of their ancestral home created with the same technology used by mining companies before their toxic extraction in the region. Other phantoms: culture that can’t be touched, can’t be held, evoked by Jesse Chun’s sojourn through the Intangible Heritage archives, interspersed with a letter to her late grandmother. Camille Henrot mashes up the most common form of myth, usually orally passed down, of how the universe formed. Origin stories followed by cataclysms, with a world after humans visualized by David Blandy in collaboration with teenagers and young adults in North West London. And the world starts anew, again. Elliptical, ellipses. For more info, /event/18441/

SEPT IN SEOUL 👻 looking forward to seeing u all from near and far this week 🤍 sharing some updates — 🌘 Harper’s Bazaar Korea, Annual Art issue thank u @ahnsg_ for the thoughtful text 🌘 Sept 4th @10pm , I’m presenting a performance for Frieze LIVE with my collaborators Yeonhee (김향수리 x 안유희) @kim_____1018 @a_youhee @galleryhyundai courtyard 🌝 curated by @moon_jeyun . I’m excited to to life this nocturnal dream of mine and am utterly grateful to the wonderful GH team for their support @yunucorn_ @its.sunghi and YC @commonwealthandcouncil 🌒 Currently until Sept 15, i have some new works on view @galleryhyundai as part of our collaborative group show, Open Hands @commonwealthandcouncil . Some new 시: concrete poems will also be a part of @commonwealthandcouncil booth A28 🌒 Sept 7 @4 :30, I’m doing a talk with the one and only @minouklim , whose work I respect tremendously 🔥 happy to be paired together for this convo on Sept 7th @ 4:30pm moderated by @hgmasters8888 for Frieze x Kiaf x KAMS under the title ‘ Hidden Realms’ 🌒 Last pic - 🥔🤍 POTATO IS LOOKING FOR A NEW FAM. Pls contact hot foster mom @s_obot if ur interested!!

시: concrete poem (no.032924: no.042024; no.032324) 2024 Graphite on hand-cut ottchil dyed hanji In 시:concrete poem, Chun creates her own asemic writing through a laborious, time-based material meditation. She interprets the Korean shamanic tradition of paper cutting (설위설경), used to create talismans and to communicate across other worlds, by repeatedly drawing graphite lines on hanji (Korean mulberry paper) and meticulously cutting her own abstract language patterns by hand. This process is also inspired by Chun’s late grandmother, a former Korean folk dancer and Buddhist monk who exposed the artist to writing as a metaphysical 수행 practice. The works reflect on embodied enunciations made through gaps, shadows, and time. Last weekend to view 밤, 낮, 달, 비, Speaking in Tongues @commonwealthandcouncil 🪐 really enjoyed seeing it speak across time, sound, and cosmic mutations with @thejulietolentino 🌱

밤, 낮, 달, 비, Speaking in Tongues on view now @commonwealthandcouncil Commonwealth and Council presents 밤, 낮, 달, 비, Speaking in Tongues by Jesse Chun, the artist’s first solo presentation in Los Angeles. Chun’s poetics in moving image, drawing, sculpture, and sound intimately ruminate on language and its interdimensional translations. Fracturing the dominant compositions of legibility, Chun unfixes language from its semantic, social, and hierarchical structures in a process she calls “unlanguaging.” Taking the found grammars of power within linguistics, particularly of the Anglophonic as a site for rupture and abstraction, Chun conjures a new material vocabulary that interweaves the diasporic and familial, drawing from Korean folk and shamanic traditions of communication. Chun’s visual and sonic abstractions invoke alternate semiotics and cosmologies of meaning, time, and the untranslatable. ✨watch with sound on 🔊 sound: Jesse Chun x Yeonhee (Kim Hyangsooree 김향수리 and Ahn Yoohee 안유희) nocturne no.071723: score for unlanguaging (천지문 and cosmos), 2024, 4 min 21 sec The last slide is a video documentation of the sound piece that permeates the room. The sound composition is a collaborative work I made with Korean folk performers 연희 @kim_____1018 @a_youhee in which we activate my score that hangs in the middle of the room, titled score for unlanguaging (천지문 and cosmos; no.071723). We began our collaboration from @artsonje_center this spring, and are looking forward to continuing 🌒 Photo and video documentation by Paul Salveson Many thanks to everyone involved, @a_youhee @kim_____1018 @commonwealthandcouncil @breanneclaudia @kibumk young oliver brenda matt + my loved ones from NY for being there for me in LA, Seoul, and beyond 🌊 on view now until June 29, 2024

Los Angeles | Jesse Chun’s (@jessechun ) 밤, 낮, 달, 비, Speaking in Tongues opens next Saturday, May 25! Commonwealth and Council presents 밤, 낮, 달, 비, Speaking in Tongues by Jesse Chun, the artist’s first solo presentation in Los Angeles. Chun’s poetics in moving image, drawing, sculpture, and sound intimately ruminate on language and its interdimensional translations. Fracturing the dominant compositions of legibility, Chun unfixes language from its semantic, social, and hierarchical structures in a process she calls “unlanguaging.” Taking the found grammars of power within linguistics, particularly of the Anglophonic as a site for rupture and abstraction, Chun conjures a new material vocabulary that interweaves the diasporic and familial, drawing from Korean folk and shamanic traditions of communication. Chun’s visual and sonic abstractions invoke alternate semiotics and cosmologies of meaning, time, and the untranslatable. 📷: Jesse Chun, installation view, 시: sea (2565), 2022, single-channel video, mirrors, rocks

Tongue of Rain 혀 달린 비 Cecilia Vicuña 세실리아 비쿠냐 Cha Yeonså 차연서 Jesse Chun 제시 천 Na Mira 나미라 Theresa Hak Kyung Cha 차학경 On view @artsonje_center 4.4-5.5 curated by Je Yun Moon 문지윤 assisted by Seowon Nam 남서원 Tongue of Rain is a gray zone exhibition that explores the power of poetic utterances, drawing inspiration from three feminist poets Cecilia Vicuña, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, and Kim Eon Hee. It employs the symbol of rain and tongue to illuminate the profound impact of poetic language, which pierces through the corridors of memory across generations. Upon entering the theater, Vicuña’s heartfelt elegy to Cha, Rain Dreamed by Sound: Homage to Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, echoes for about 20 minutes. The Korean-American writer and artist Cha was raped and murdered in New York shortly after publishing her novel DICTEE in 1982. Vicuña felt an unstoppable connection to Cha, akin to the relentless force of rain. In Vicuña’s elegy, rain symbolizes the force that reverberates the enduring nightmares of gender violence and revitalizes the souls of the afflicted. Both Vicuña and Cha, immigrants from Chile and Korea to New York, embrace poetry and performance, forging connections with feminism, shamanism, and maternal traditions. The dialogue between Vicuña and Cha extends across generations, linking Na Mira, Jesse Chun, and Cha Yeonså, delving into the themes of mourning, the enduring spirit of poetry, and the transformative potential of language. * * THC’s unfinished film, White Dust from Mongolia is being shown in Korea for the first time. It’s been surreal watching this place in the 80s through her eyes upon her return - don’t miss this chance to see it. Moved to speak alongside Theresa, Cecilia, Na, Yeonså, and the great Korean poet Kim Eon Hee ☔️

Can language subvert colonial narratives? 🌙 Jesse Chun’s (@jessechun ) ‘O (for various skies)’ (2021) is a two-channel video sculpture disrupts American colonial moon narratives, redacting bureaucratic texts into concrete poetry while interweaving Korean folklore. Mirrors on the floor, inspired by shamanistic practices, activate as portals, challenging imperialist language into non-linear poetics. ‘O (for various skies)’ is part of the KADIST collection and was presented as part of From the KADIST collection: Be here, or even better, be nowhere at KADIST San Francisco in 2023. 📽️ Jesse Chun’s (@jessechun ) ‘O (for various skies)’ (2021) | Courtesy of the artist, KADIST collection

On view now @commonwealthandcouncil — as part of Borrowed Recipes, with Anna Sew Hoy, Carmen Argote, David Alekhuogie, Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio, and Patricia Fernández. Showing recent 시:concrete poem + sculptures that I made last year with my late grandmother’s writings to me (from when I was 8), which i found years after her passing. A former Korean folk dancer and later a Buddhist monk, she wrote extensively as a form of meditation. Some of these notes are buried inside buddhas at a temple in jejudo, and many lost, but I’m happy to see her words continue to orbit 💫 . . From direct homage to uncanny regurgitation, intergenerational ties are cited and unpacked, and at times revised, in the works in Borrowed Recipes. A tapestry of interwoven inheritances, with gaps and frayed edges, emerges as a reminder that our stories, selves, and inheritances cannot be represented in any linear etiological narrative. - excerpt from @kibumk 🔮 installation photos by Paul Salveson On view until March 2nd 🎹

시:𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑐𝑟𝑒𝑡𝑒 𝑝𝑜𝑒𝑚𝑠 (𝑛𝑜.111123)(𝑛𝑜.111323), along with 𝑠𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑒𝑠 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑢𝑛𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑢𝑎𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑔 are on view now @thaddaeusropac in Seoul, as part of a group exhibition titled <nostalgics on realities> curated by @kim.sung_woo 🌫️ with Eugene Jung, Yongju Kwon, Minsun, Hwayeon Nam and Yooyun Yang. On view until March 9 🪞