ABOUT

Young Joon Kwak is a Los Angeles–based artist making sculptures, performances, and collective acts of queer and trans world-building. Through invert-cast bodies, glitter, metal, resin, dirt, mirrored glass, and iridescent crystals, they transform intimacy, touch, and collaboration into shimmering forms that queer sculpture, monument, and history. Kwak founded the collective Mutant Salon and performs in the electronic dance-noise diva band Xina Xurner.

Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include Commonwealth and Council (2026); Esther Schipper (2025); Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art (2025); and Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (2024). Their work has also been included in the Whitney Biennial (2026), Made in L.A. 2023, and exhibitions and performances at Hauser & Wirth; Tufts University Art Galleries; Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts; and the Art Museum of the National University of Colombia.

Kwak has received the Trellis Art Fund Milestone Grant (2024), Artadia Los Angeles Award (2024), California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists (2022), and Korean Arts Foundation of America Artist Award (2020). Kwak’s work has been featured in Artforum, ARTnews, Frieze, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Texte zur Kunst, and other publications.

Kwak’s work is held in the collections of Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University; Crocker Art Museum; Dallas Museum of Art; Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; MSU Broad Art Museum; and Speed Art Museum.

Kwak is Assistant Professor of Sculpture and Spatial Practices at UC Santa Barbara and is represented by Commonwealth and Council.