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Title
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Sun Park (1991 - )
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Description
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Sun Park (they/them) is a Korean-American visual artist and writer from San Francisco, California. Their work focuses on bodily sensations, identity, and the environment and is influenced by their own experiences with spirituality. They are a Union College alum, Class of 2013, and received their Masters Degree in Fine Arts from San Francisco State University in 2023. During their time as a student at Union, Sun often worked with Professor Fernando Orellana. More recently, they came back to Union this past Winter Term to teach a course in digital arts. Though their work used to consist of mostly paintings, Sun considers themself to be a more multi-media artist now, employing video, ceramics, performance, installation, stained glass, and even slime into their work. They also occasionally do stand up comedy.
In their exhibition Bulls in the City, titled after a story they wrote when they were 8-years old, Park explores themes of resource scarcity, competition, and power, as well as gender and sensory relationships through self-stimulatory (stims or stimming for short) behavior.
For example, in the piece, From the water, sparkling & heavy, which is installed at the threshold of the gallery space and presented as a curtain made from plastic lace and seagrass, Sun explores their relationship with gender and memory through hair. When they got their first masculine haircut, which was actually part of a performance piece in the same space, they described it as touching freshly cut grass, a hair-sensation very different from the one they had previously known. Thus, the piece is a nod to the long hair they had before, depicted by the lengthy strands of plastic, in contrast to the masculine haircut they have now. Additionally, the seagrass used in the piece alludes to their own memories of growing up by the sea.
From the same exhibit, in the piece Bulls in the City (pictured below), the original story was inscribed on paper and displayed using tacks facing the opposite way in the exhibit.
It reads:
One day two bulls found lots and lots of grass. Each one thought the grass would be his to eat. But since both of them were there, each one thought the other would steal his grass. So they started to fight. The bigger bull, who often ate lots of grass and flowers, won. The smaller bull hardly ate anything, so of course the big bull won.
From a different installation, Sun’s work Caught Up was presented alongside another piece of theirs, Dreams of the Room, at the San Francisco Arts Commission Main Gallery. The piece is suspended in space in such a way that it appears static, a frozen image, but also active, in a moment of flowing, twisting or curling, and gathering unwanted influences or spirits that may try to enter the space. The shadow this display then creates also highlights the spirituality of the piece, emphasizing the tangible and intangible and the auras objects might possess. Composed of sand, salt, and gochugaru (a coarse chili flake commonly associated with Korean cuisine especially kimchi; Hongu et al., 2017) mixed with slime and spread on plastic, Caught Up utilizes its materials as well as its display to ward off unwanted spirits (Jung; Moga 2009; Suzuki 2014) while also tying in Sun’s Korean heritage and Christian spiritual upbringing.
Currently, their artwork can be found on display in Edge on the Square’s exhibition All Eyes on Us: Invention & Ingenuity During Artistic Diasporas in San Francisco. More information here: https://www.edgeonthesquare.org/all-eyes-on-us.
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Alternative Title
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Park, Sun. Caught Up. (2022). Photograph by Aaron Wojack.
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Source
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Hongu, Nobuko, Angela S. Kim, Asuka Suzuki, Hope Wilson, Karen C. Tsui, and Sunmin Park. "Korean kimchi: promoting healthy meals through cultural tradition." Journal of Ethnic Foods 4, no. 3 (2017): 172-180.
Jung, Yeon Hak. "Gochu folk practices". National Folk Museum of Korea / Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism. https://folkency.nfm.go.kr/en/topic/detail/1746
Moga, Iulian. "Symbolic functions of salt and related similes in oriental curses and blessings." Arheologia Moldovei 32, no. 1 (2009): 265-271.
Park, Sun. About. https://www.sunparkparksun.com/about/
Suzuki, Yui. "Twanging bows and throwing rice: Warding off evil in medieval Japanese birth scenes." Artibus Asiae 74, no. 1 (2014): 17-41.
Picture Sources:
Park, Sun (sunparkparksun). “🐲 Immerse yourself in artist Sun Park's multisensory exploration of diaspora at Edge's upcoming exhibition—All Eyes On Us….”. Instagram, March 18, 2025. https://www.instagram.com/p/DHWb3tZS8ic/?img_index=1.
Park, Sun. Bulls in the City. https://www.sunparkparksun.com/bulls-in-the-city/.
Park, Sun. Caught Up & Dreams of the Room. https://www.sunparkparksun.com/caught-up/.
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Name
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Alanna Byrne
