Haewon Kang (b. 2000, South Korea) is an artist working with metals, silicone, and biomaterials. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Metals/Jewelry/CAD-CAM at Temple University's Tyler School of Art and Architecture in Philadelphia. She has received awards from the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) and the Korea Craft & Design Foundation (KCDF). Most recently, her work was featured in both the online and in-person exhibitions at the SNAG Conference.
Haewon Kang (b. 2000, South Korea) is an artist working with metals, silicone, and biomaterials. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Metals/Jewelry/CAD-CAM at Temple University's Tyler School of Art and Architecture in Philadelphia. She has received awards from the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) and the Korea Craft & Design Foundation (KCDF). Most recently, her work was featured in both the online and in-person exhibitions at the SNAG Conference.
Prescription medication helps me return to everyday life. Yet it cannot tell me how to live beyond recovery or who I am beyond being a patient or a victim. Violence and fear do not remain confined to memory. Reinforced by the way others see us, social prejudice, and the judgments we internalize, they continue to shape our bodies, thoughts, and actions. My practice begins with a question: Are we defined by memory, or can we remake ourselves by changing our relationship to it?
Through observation and documentation, I examine how past experiences surface in bodily sensations, habits, and everyday actions. Making allows me to record these traces and understand myself from multiple perspectives. It also becomes a way to reconfigure my relationship to memory.
My practice is grounded in metalsmithing and 3D printing. I combine metal, silicone, and fiber through a range of fabrication processes. The contrasting physical properties of these materials bring opposing conditions into coexistence: past and present, protection and confinement, control and flexibility. Combining materials and processes keeps the work from being fixed to a single interpretation and leaves room for multiple readings and sensory experiences. I use the properties and interactions of materials to give form to questions of memory, relationships, and identity.
Do I shape how I relate to memory and the way others see me, or do these forces define and control me? Social stigma surrounding past events can be internalized as self-stigma; together with memory, it can limit how a person understands themselves. Labels such as patient or victim may offer a simple way to understand a complex person, but they also risk reducing that person’s identity to a wound. By making and presenting my work, I confront the fear of being defined by these forces and bring personal experience into a shared space. I understand recovery as a process shaped not by individual will alone, but by relationships, empathy, and new ways of seeing. I hope my work offers viewers a moment to reflect on how memory and social judgment have shaped their identities and imagine a different future.
Prescription medication helps me return to everyday life. Yet it cannot tell me how to live beyond recovery or who I am beyond being a patient or a victim. Violence and fear do not remain confined to memory. Reinforced by the way others see us, social prejudice, and the judgments we internalize, they continue to shape our bodies, thoughts, and actions. My practice begins with a question: Are we defined by memory, or can we remake ourselves by changing our relationship to it?
Through observation and documentation, I examine how past experiences surface in bodily sensations, habits, and everyday actions. Making allows me to record these traces and understand myself from multiple perspectives. It also becomes a way to reconfigure my relationship to memory.
My practice is grounded in metalsmithing and 3D printing. I combine metal, silicone, and fiber through a range of fabrication processes. The contrasting physical properties of these materials bring opposing conditions into coexistence: past and present, protection and confinement, control and flexibility. Combining materials and processes keeps the work from being fixed to a single interpretation and leaves room for multiple readings and sensory experiences. I use the properties and interactions of materials to give form to questions of memory, relationships, and identity.
Do I shape how I relate to memory and the way others see me, or do these forces define and control me? Social stigma surrounding past events can be internalized as self-stigma; together with memory, it can limit how a person understands themselves. Labels such as patient or victim may offer a simple way to understand a complex person, but they also risk reducing that person’s identity to a wound. By making and presenting my work, I confront the fear of being defined by these forces and bring personal experience into a shared space. I understand recovery as a process shaped not by individual will alone, but by relationships, empathy, and new ways of seeing. I hope my work offers viewers a moment to reflect on how memory and social judgment have shaped their identities and imagine a different future.
