featured artists
hybrid spirits in motion
Let Janny Baek’s forms surprise and delight you.
Born in Seoul, Janny Baek moved with her family to Flushing, Queens at the age of three. Though her school was largely made up of immigrants from various backgrounds, traditional Korean culture and the American way were often at odds with one another at the time. Like many children from immigrant backgrounds, she experienced the challenges of growing up in one culture while striving to fit into another.
Working on the doorstep of K-Town in a craft so deeply rooted in ancient Korean history has stimulated conversations with other Korean artists in the United States, all of whom contribute to the expansion of contemporary ceramics practice. In 2023, Janny had the chance to show her work in a group exhibition at The Korea Society in NYC alongside two fellow practitioners, Sun Koo Yuh and Steven Young Lee. Later that year, she was featured in the New York Times T Magazine section in a piece entitled, The Ceramists Putting a Fresh Spin on Traditional Korean Techniques. Indeed, despite leaving for school, work, and also during the pandemic, the energy, busyness, and sense of ambition that defines NYC continues to draw Janny back. Raising her daughters in the city, she hopes for them to enjoy the wealth of perspectives, exposure, and opportunities that only NYC can offer.
Focusing on themes of matter in transformation, Janny’s work explores issues of agency, instability, and tension inherent in our ever-shifting relationship with nature and technology. Constructed via traditional hand building and nerikomi techniques, her pieces embody transitional moments caught in a state of infinite variability; hybrid spirits that explore the limits of expectations and cultural codes.
Though her practice incorporates elements of play and experimentation as forms of inquiry, people are often surprised by how Janny’s joyful works stand in contrast to her more serious disposition. Having lost her father in the tragic Korean Air Lines 007 incident and subsequently emerging as a late creative bloomer, she is more than happy to try new things and change her mind in order to satiate curiosity and probe the boundaries between the whimsical and the profound. In this sense, her aesthetically pleasing and often exuberant colors and forms represent growth, mutability, and a flexible approach to change that enables her to deal with the wonderful complexity and unpredictability of life in NYC.
