SoVA Anderson Lecturer
WonJung Choi
Anderson Lecture – October 7, 2026
WonJung Choi (b. Seoul, South Korea) is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans sculpture, installation, textiles, ceramics, and digital media. She received her B.F.A. and M.F.A. in sculpture from Hongik University in Seoul and an M.F.A. in fine arts from the School of Visual Arts, New York. For more than two decades, Choi has exhibited extensively across Asia and the United States, presenting solo exhibitions in New York, Tokyo, Seoul, Gwangju, Connecticut, and Virginia. Her work has been included in exhibitions at Bloomberg Headquarters (New York), Swarovski (New York), the Marunouchi Building (Tokyo), Arario Gallery (Seoul), Wave Hill (New York), the Visual Arts Center of Richmond, and the Gwangju Cultural Foundation, among other institutions and venues. She has also participated in international art fairs in Miami and Beijing.
Choi has been awarded residencies and fellowships at the Museum of Arts and Design (New York), Artists Alliance Inc. (New York), the Visual Arts Center of Richmond, and the Vermont Studio Center. She received Best in Show at the Trawick Prize Awards. Her work is held in public and private collections, including Samsung (Korea), Swarovski (New York), Voltz Clarke LLC (New York), and ARCHEUS (London). Choi currently lives and works between the United States and South Korea. She serves as adjunct professor at Virginia Commonwealth University while maintaining an active international exhibition practice.
Artist's Statement
My practice investigates human identity as a material record of environmental adaptation, cultural hybridity, and deep-time survival. For two decades, I have interrogated the question, "Where are you from?"
What began as a personal inquiry, tracing my own lineage back 65,000 years through genetic testing, has since evolved into a universal narrative of human endurance. I seek to bridge my own migratory story with the broader history of our species, redefining the body not as a fixed entity but as a dynamic map shaped by movement and climatic pressure.
I find profound inspiration in the earliest artistic expressions of the Upper Paleolithic, specifically the Lion Man, which represents humanity’s first hybrid form, and various Venus figurines. I feel a deep empathy for these prehistoric artists and view their work as symbolic counterparts to biological adaptation. For me, their creations are not merely artifacts but serve as evidence of how our ancestors imagined and stabilized their existence amidst environmental extremity. By utilizing 3D scanning, digital fabrication, ceramics, and textiles, I transmute invisible biological data into monumental topographical landscapes.
My mission is to connect this ancestral legacy with contemporary sculptural practice to reveal how radical environmental shifts are encoded in our very fabric. I believe that identity is a resilient and fluid archive of shared survival, proving that the capacity to adapt is an ancient strength we all carry.
