Collection: Chunbum Park

Chunbum Park

Artist Statement (Shortened):

Unable to transition my gender due to pressure from family and society, I repeatedly paint

myself as a woman.

What is feminine beauty? What is feminine as opposed to the masculine? For me, the two

directions in the spectrum of gender are like symbols, similar to the bathroom signs. The

masculine sign is rectangular, while the feminine sign is circular and/or triangular. Signs are

essentially actors in the psychological theater, who perform their roles according to the

expectations of their signs, almost like stereotypes.

In a metaphor that I conjure, the tiger tacitly desires to become the rabbit, while the rabbit

secretly wants to become the tiger. The symbol of the tiger contains the codes for power,

while the symbol of the rabbit contains the codes for fragility. (But fragility invites the need

for protection, which in effect can be a greater form of power.)

A model for my gender fluidity includes the Japanese onnagata, the male actors of artful

femininity in Kabuki theater. Contrary to the theory of Judith Butler's gender performativity,

the onnagata have an on-and-off switch enabling them to perform the image of womanhood

and return to their male forms off-stage. It is a different kind of gender formation, in which

repetition of gendered acts sees many interruptions. In my paintings, I am a happy, healthy,

beautiful, energetic, intelligent, sexy, and powerful woman.

Artist Statement (Addendum):

In a similar and opposite way to the penis envy described by Sigmund Freud, I came to

desire to have female breasts that I myself lacked, yet I feel that the male sexual organs are

like an alien octopus latched onto my pelvis. From a young age, I pretended to dislike girls,

even though I wanted to become a girl myself, whom I would draw secretly as me (and

throw away in fear of being found out.)

How do I truly know who I am and what I want to become, if I am a virgin and have never

had the chance to fully articulate my sexuality by actualizing it in reality? The state of

virginity and questioning becomes not only a temporary and transitory state but also a form

of continuous identity in and of itself until it is broken, even as I fear with sadness that I will

remain a virgin forever.

Investigating the feminine beauty in the realm of hybridity allows me to push and pull the

multitude of beauty norms, desires, and fantasies. I often paint from my imagination

because I am trying to depict a form of beauty that is ideal to me that I can perceive within

my mind, shaped by my own aesthetic sensibilities and instincts. What often results is a

negotiation of anatomical forms and features of beauty that resist racialization, and hybrid

cultural and racial identity reflecting the cosmopolitan metropolis in which I work and live.

Born in 1991 in South Korea, my psyche and preconceptions around gender and beauty

coalesced at a time when traditional beliefs and stereotypes were prevalent. As a child, I

automatically associated the masculine attractiveness with strength and the feminine beauty

with fragility, and they possibly secretly desired to be the rabbit rather than the tiger.