Seongmin Ahn is a Brooklyn based painter and inter-disciplinary installation artist. Growing up in a conservative family, and studying Korean traditional painting, yet also immigrating and studying contemporary art in US, she has struggled to adapt herself to a new cultural environment and to adopt the new while keeping the old with both sensitivity and boldness. Nevertheless, she has forged a very interesting path as an artist, which has informed her unique artwork and and giving it a strong identity.

In her work, she begins with traditional forms and themes, which she then extends into multi-disciplinary and multi-media practices by adopting science, technology, and multiple cognitive models. Her cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary approach enhances viewers' ability to empathize and engage. She adapts her practice to the emerging issues of contemporary art and community interest, reflecting the concerns and problems of a globalized world. 

Seongmin Anh will continue the creation of a community mural, designed to bring a subtle but powerful message of reassurance to people whose lives have been devastated by the coronavirus pandemic. Again:다시시작 is a hybrid letter painting a hybrid letter painting, developed during extreme quarantine in spring 2020 in New York City. It embodies Seongmin’s direct response to the nationwide lockdown caused by COVID-19. The ornamented text conveys the conviction that we can begin again, even though we were seriously damaged by the pandemic. The decoratively designed word “Again” will be transferred in multiple international languages onto large-scale exterior walls. The conjunction of different languages suggests cross-cultural exchange and an underlying connection between various ethnic groups. Korean letters are stylized with Western ornaments and English letters are decorated with Asian motives such as a dragon and clouds pattern. Seongmin is now working to expand this motif, using other languages such as Spanish and Chinese to reach out to diverse immigrant communities in the United States.

Seongmin has extensive experience as a teaching artist at such institutions as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Queens Museum, the Art Students League, and the Asia Society. She is currently an adjunct faculty member at Queens College and the Maryland Institute College of Art, designing and teaching innovative workshops and art classes for various groups of participants.

As an active participant in the contemporary art scene in New York and East Asia, Seongmin has exhibited her work at such major venues as the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Seoul), the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon, the Charles Wang Center at Stony Brook University, and the Hello Museum (Seoul). Her work has been reviewed in The Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, NY Arts magazine, The Baltimore Sun, The Plain Dealer and others. She has been continuously represented by the Kang Collection in New York, Asian Art Works in Beijing, and Gallery Stan in Seoul. Seongmin is also a two-time recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and the first prize winner of the AHL Foundation Visual Art Competition.

Please visit Seongmin’s Instagram and her website for more information.