Chunbum Park (CV)

Chunbum Park, also known as Chun, was born in Seoul, South Korea in 1991 and grew up in Mokpo. She came to America in 2000 to attend school and attained her BFA in Fine Arts at the School of Visual Arts in 2020 and is working on her MFA in Fine Arts Studio at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She changed her pronouns from he to she or they while studying at RIT, as she repeatedly painted herself as a woman and found her hidden desire to become a female beauty. She follows the model of the onnagata, who are male performers of femininity in Kabuki theatre, and which allows her to switch between her more masculine and feminine identities.

Artist Statement

Why do most characters in Japanese anime and popular video games have white features that are nonexistent or uncommon among Northeast Asians, such as a narrow and pointy nose, colored iris and hair, double eyelids, and pink skin?

My art attempts to restore an authentic vision of Northeast Asian Beauty through the pursuit of an original Northeast Asian beauty prior to its racialization, or a hybrid beauty, which incorporates certain non-Northeast Asian traits and stylizations borrowed from other cultures and peoples (as part of the Northeast Asian identity). Because beauty traits and practices are constantly borrowed and shared between and among various people, there is no true original Northeast Asian beauty prior to racialization. The alternative, which is the hybrid beauty, borrows western dress, makeup, and use of plastic surgery to maintain and redefine the Northeast Asian beauty and identity, without necessarily striving to become white.

Like gender, beauty is performative and relies on a never-ending repetition of performance to become realized. Through my paintings, I depict myself as a woman and actualize the Northeast Asian beauty through idealization, like plastic surgery. My paintings become a mirror in which I see a Northeast Asian beauty.