Through her paintings, sculptures, and installations, June Ahn reveals the emotional constellations that come to light while living abroad. She is deeply influenced by the substance of interpersonal bonds across borders, many of which are marked by a lingering sense of absence and loss.

Now a student at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, June has spent lengthy periods of time away from her nearest and dearest. Siphoned into a lonely vacuum by a strong form of transnational gravity, she has often grappled with feelings and sensations that simply cannot be articulated in words. Above all, linguistic barriers have restricted June’s ability to disclose inner truths about discriminatory practices on the ground, as well as a shifting sense of self that raged beneath the surface.

While working on her “Portraits of Side-Space” series, June decided to pay a visit to the exhibition venue in advance. Although small and narrow, she was taken aback by how private and intimate it all felt, like a blank canvas with distinct sanctuary vibes. Moved by this inviting vessel of opportunity, she was able to open enlightened clearings in which to unleash abstract sentiments and materialize long-marginalized secrets about her migratory experience.

In the face of bewildering surges of instability and alienation, unlikely encounters with international peers have encouraged June to empathize across contextual divides. As cultural trailblazers, her artistic subjects do not represent specific individuals or definitive physical forms. Improvised in a blurry cloud of oil paints and pastels, their genders, orientations, and broader social coordinates cannot be clearly distinguished and thus essentialized. By relocating her subjects in a realm where identities are liberated from grander cultural narratives and the pulls of collective consciousness, she allows them to pivot depending on where they are exhibited, and exist in a more fluid, mouldable, and autonomous state of existence.

Our Space (2024). Oil on Canvas. 120 x 160cm.

Portraits of Side-space 1 (2024). Oil on Canvas. 180 x 140cm.

In A Narrow Cube (2024). Oil on Canvas. 120 x 100cm.

Portraits of Side-space 3 (2024). Oil on Canvas. 180 x 130cm.

Discover more of June’s works in Issue 5 of our magazine!