Daewoon Kim

Pink, I like

“Mom, I like pink”

I was too young to understand why my mom insisted I wear blue clothes. “ If you continue to play with dolls and wear pink your penis is going to fall off !”

As a young man, I liked pink and wanted to play with dolls, but instead, I was compelled to wear blue clothes and play with robots to fit social norms expected of the typical Korean man. When I first learned about drag culture my world was flipped upside down. Drag presented an alternative view of gender. On stage, the drag queen assumes a persona to perform the opposite gender. I think drag is a creative way of expressing one’s self. Drag, to me, is the ultimate form of self-expression and a way of expressing identity as a sexual minority. For me, drag is a new perspective on artistry and an interesting departure from the society that tries to write it off.

My work explores modern drag culture, as a formative language for sculpture. Starting with reproducing their hyperbolic fashion aesthetic, anatomical alterations, and their feminine gestures into collages in which abstract forms and reenactments of movement coexist. Currently, I’m experimenting with how I can express gender socialization. I am playing with and deconstructing socially defined codes of masculinity and femininity. I represent femininity by building curves and flowers dressed in flamboyant decorative patterns, and masculinity by using straight lines and rough textures. I'm very interested in the heterogeneity of masculinity and femininity. In addition, through a contrast of color, the social structure of gender is also expressed. This process creates a single sculpture in which two aspects exist. Allowing me to play with heterogeneous forms and spaces in an attempt to produce a sculpture that exists in the non-binary.