Jesse Chun

Jesse Chun deconstructs and reimagines language(s) to create poetic, asemic works in mediums that cannot be reduced to singular categorization as she works across video, sculpture, drawing, and performance. In works entitled 시: concrete poem, she draws from an inheritance—Korean shamanic papercutting—to make her own abstract language. 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. Chun reinterprets this tradition to make her own 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. ...

Commonwealth and Council is a gallery in Koreatown, Los Angeles founded in 2010. Our program is rooted in our commitment to explore how a community of artists can sustain our co-existence through generosity and hospitality. Commonwealth and Council celebrates our manifold identities and experiences through the shared dialogue of art—championing practices by women, queer, POC, and our ally artists to build counter-histories that reflect our individual and collective realities.