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Bio
Yunjin La-mei Woo is an interdisciplinary artist and writer who examines what it means to be human or otherwise through allegories of contagion, haunting, and conjuring. Born as a granddaughter of a Korean shaman, Woo is interested in summoning a different image of who we may become by dealing with who we have been. She investigates how images of the infectious, insane, or supernatural intersect with issues of power, gender, class, and ethnicity. To this end, Woo pays special attention to the everyday as a politically charged site where the dominant ideology is not only affectively felt and but also infected by unexpected aberrations and creative ruses. Her research-based work encompasses video, performance, drawing, sound, installation, writing, and social interventions.Woo received her MFA in Sculpture from Seoul National University and PhD in Communication and Culture from Indiana University Bloomington. Her creative work and writing have been exhibited, screened, and published nationally and internationally. Woo is currently Associate Professor of Art at the Metropolitan State University of Denver.
Degree
PhD in Communication and Culture
Indiana University Bloomington
MFA in Sculpture
Seoul National University
Other in Sculpture
Seoul National University
Published Works
- Woo, Y. (2023). Conjuring Unruly Subjects: Allegories of Haunting, Mothering, and Mediating. Indiana University Bloomington. https://www.proquest.com/docview/2829946289
- Marshall, J., Stewart, C., Thulson, M. A., Woo, Y. (2021). Artist Interview and Artworks as part of a Chapter in "Contemporary Art with Young People: Themes in Art for K-12 Classrooms". Teachers College Press, https://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Contemporary-Art-Young-People/dp/0807765759
- Woo, Y. (2020). A Post-Studio Approach: Do-At-Home Assignment Ideas in Times of COVID-19 and Beyond . Colorado Art Education Association, http://www.caeaco.org/resources/Documents/Spring_Collage_2020_final_pgs%5B2%5D.pdf
- Woo, Y. (2017). Sanctuary for All. Zuchkerman Museum of Art, https://www.yunjinlameiwoo.com/sanctuary-for-all
- Woo, L. Y. (2017). Trembling Masks. Noise Gallery, 1(1), 38-59. https://www.noise.center/writing.
- Woo, L. Y. (2016). Infecting Humanness: A Critique of the Autonomous Self in Contagion. (Issue 1, pp 191-217). Palgrave Macmillan UK. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52141-5_9
- Woo, Y. (2015). The Aesthetics of Parasitism: Away from a Battle, a Rupture from within. Critic-al, http://www.critic-al.org
- Woo, Y. (2015). The Rhetoric of Disgrace and Safe Individuals. Critic-al, http://www.critic-al.org
- Woo, Y. (2014). Para-Sites: Four Porous Bodies and Their Parasites. Self-published artist book in limited editions of 100, https://para-sites.org
- Woo, L. Y. (2014). The Centipedes. Non Grata,
- Woo, Y. (2011). Expansion of Perception Through Body (MFA thesis) . Seoul National University .
- Woo, L. Y. (2010). Turn, Turn, Return. 93 Museum,
Research Interests
How do we reconcile with the ghosts of our past and envision a livable future in a world that keeps ending? Invoking Korean shamanic rituals and folk mythologies, my work summons the forces and agents that have shaped our intergenerational pain and resilience in a speculative space. In that space, I cast poignantly charged images and strange voices of potential transformation like potent spells. Animate objects, unnamed heroines, hungry spirits, and mythical beings are called upon in allegorical narratives and magical arrangements to conjure a vision of fantastic fissures in patriarchal, colonial, and materialist oppressions. Together, they evoke a palpable presence to what has been repressed and erased from the dominant social consciousness, toward a collective healing.
Teaching Interests
Interdisciplinary studio art, post-studio practice, autoethnography, studio foundations, visual studies, cultural studies