January Yoon Cho

Biography

January Yoon Cho is an interdisciplinary artist whose work has been exhibited internationally across the United States and Europe.

Cho grew up in Seoul, South Korea, in a family of physicians. Her father, born during the Japanese occupation and later a Korean War refugee who resettled in South Korea as a child, deeply shaped her early awareness of place and displacement. Throughout her practice, she continues to investigate her relationship with her surroundings. She later moved to the United States to pursue her art education, earning a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from Parsons School of Design. Her life’s various chapters—from New York City to suburban Texas—have informed a profound connection between environment and creative expression. Now based in New York City, she incorporated the name “January” into her artistic identity in 2020.

Her work has been featured at venues and festivals including the Hammond Museum, Islip Art Museum, and the Korean Consulate General in New York; Ely Center of Contemporary Art (New Haven) in Connecticut; Penn State University in Pennsylvania; The LAB in San Francisco, California; Austin Museum of Art, Dallas Center for Contemporary Art, Women & Their Work (Austin), University of Texas at Dallas, and DiverseWorks (Houston) in Texas; the Museum of Fine Arts in Tallahassee, Florida; and internationally at the Centro de Cultura Contemporánea in Barcelona, Spain; Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, Spain; Triennale di Milano in Italy; and Fondazione Querini Stampalia in Venice, Italy.

One of her major projects, The Walk photo and video series, received grants from New York State Council on the Arts Support for Artists, Puffin Foundation (Environmental Art), and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund (Feminist Art). The Walk Project is granted a fiscal sponsorship from New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA). Her video work, The Desert Walk Video, was selected for a month-long screening on an oversized LED screen in downtown Reno, Nevada, as part of the City of Reno Public Art Program. She served as the Artist-in-Residence for a month at Weir Farm National Historical Park in Connecticut and participated in Vermont Studio Center Residency. 

Cho was a visiting artist at Ringling College of Art and Design and has given artist talks and lectures at non-profit and corporate institutions such as the Austin Museum of Art, Women & Their Work, and McKinsey & Company NY. She has taught at Parsons School of Design and The New School in New York, as well as at Hanyang University in Seoul, Korea. Additionally, she developed environmental education activity guides for K-12 public school students, which were used during her exhibitions at the Gold Coast Arts Center in Great Neck, New York, and the Long Island City Arts Festival.

Her work is included in international collections such as the Benetton Foundation in Italy, and her reviews appear in publications including Hyperallergic, The Huffington Post, and The Dallas Morning News. Her work is also featured in the book, The T&T Clark Handbook of Christian Theology and Climate Change, published by Bloomsbury Publishing.

Artist statement

My work explores identity by examining the relationships between individuals and their environments through photography, video, drawing, and performance. The necessity to adapt to new places deeply impacted me to examine the connection with our surroundings. Growing up in Korea and living in many different cities from the metropolis of New York to suburban Texas, I have learned about nuances beyond the obvious differences in each location. Through my daily observations of these subtleties, I became increasingly interested in depicting matters that we are aware of, but which may not be physically visible. In my work, I utilize simple graphics as clues to visualize these invisible themes.

I often pose in my photographs and videos. I work with an assistant who presses the shutter after I set up the camera composition. Subsequent to editing photographs and videos, I create graphics with a digital pen on a digital drawing tablet to develop a narrative. The digital process of creating graphics lets me work on multiple versions of compositions before I select the desired one while preserving the integrity of the hand-drawn qualities of drawings with a pen on paper. As a following step of the digital process, I superimpose the drawings over the image of myself performing. The final output of the work is a series of photographic prints and videos. The result is the observations made in different social and physical settings while building a new identity by adapting and conforming to the new surroundings.