YONG SOON MIN
Professor (MFA 1979,
University of California Berkeley; Whitney Program, 1981). She is
Affiliate Faculty of the Asian American Studies Department, and
teaches courses that address the intersection of art and cultural
studies. Her artistic practice incorporates diverse mediums and
processes that cover a range of topics including race, cultural
identity, the intersection of history and memory, and the role of the
artist and the arts as agents of social change. Her work has been
exhibited since the late 1970s in venues such as the San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of
Modern Art (NYC), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), Havana Bienal,
Kumho Museum (Korea), Museum Folkwang (Germany), Forum Stadtpark
(Austria) and Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Denmark). She has also
been awarded project commissions from Asia Society and Percent for Art
(NYC), and Washington State Arts Commission. She has taught
previously at the University of Ohio at Athens (1981-84), the Rhode
Island School of Design (1992) and the California Institute of the
Arts (1991). Since 1987, she has lectured widely about her work and
related issues in the United States and abroad.

Min has received numerous awards and grants, including most recently
the national “Anonymous Was A Woman Award ($25,000) for
under-recognized women artists (2001); City of Los Angeles Cultural
Affairs Department, Artist in Community grant (1996); Travel Grants
Pilot (for travel to the Philippines)- a joint project of NEA and Arts
International (1993); Organization of Independent Artists’s Warren
Tanner Memorial Fund award for sculptor (1993); National Printmaking
Fellowship (funded by NEA) at the Rutgers Center for Innovative
Printmaking Workshop (1990); NEA Visual Artists Fellowship grant
in New Genre (1989-90); and New York State Council on the Arts AIR
grant (1985).

She has also been awarded artists’ residencies, most notably:
SamzieSpace International Artist residency in Seoul (2003);
Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Residency (1997); Institute for
Contemporary Art (PS 1) National Studio Program residency (1991-2) and
a residency at Yaddo (1985).

Min was commissioned by the 4th Gwangju Biennale to curate an
exhibition about the Korean diaspora which was held in Gwangju, South
Korea in 2002. The exhibition entitled, “THERE: Sites of Korean
Diaspora” included a broad range of works by 24 artists and 33 film
and video selections from the Korean diaspora in China, Japan,
Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Brazil and the United States. Min conducted
original fieldwork interviews and produced video documentation of her
research trip, a timeline of diaspora history and edited an exhibition
catalog with essay contributions from sources in each of the five
sites. Some of her earlier curatorial projects addressed the
Palestinian Intifada of 1989 (co-curated with Shirin Neshat); the 1991
Gulf War; and the Philippine diaspora (1996).

Min has served on the Board of Directors of Asian American Arts
Alliance (1988-1993); Artists Space (1991-1993); College Art
Association (1997-2001); and the Korean American Museum (1997-the
present).

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