Young In Hong

Young In Hong works across embroidery, drawing, sculpture, installation, sound and performance, using processes of translation and reinterpretation to examine established cultural and social hierarchies. Drawing on archival imagery, histories of collective resistance and female labour, Hong gives form to narratives often overlooked by dominant histories. Embroidery is central to her practice, its associations with feminised labour providing a means to explore questions of value and authorship. More recently, Hong has extended these concerns beyond human experience, reinterpreting animal sounds, movements and behaviours through image, sculpture and performance. Moving between media, her work explores alternative forms of communication and exchange, examining boundaries between art and craft, individual and collective, and human and non-human experience.

Young In Hong was born in Seoul, South Korea, in 1972. She studied Sculpture at Seoul National University, completing her BA in 1996 and MA in 1998, before receiving an MA in Fine Art (2000) and PhD in Art (2011) from Goldsmiths, University of London. She was awarded the Kimsechoong Art Prize in 2011, was shortlisted for the Korea Artist Prize in 2019, and has undertaken residencies at Delfina Foundation (2014) and Hauser & Wirth Somerset (2024). Selected solo exhibitions include Image Unidentified, Art Sonje Center, Seoul (2014); Ring of Animals, Kunsthal Extra City, Antwerp (2023); Five Acts, Spike Island, Bristol (2024); and Five Acts & A Monologue, Art Sonje Center, Seoul (2025). Group exhibitions include the Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju (2004 and 2014); Korea Artist Prize 2019, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul (2019); Forms of the Shadow, Secession, Vienna (2024); and Korean Embroidery in Modern Times, MMCA Deoksugung, Seoul (2024). Young In Hong currently lives and works in Bristol.