Interview
Sena Kwon
Sena Kwon is an award winning illustrator from South Korea, currently living in Brooklyn, New York.
She is working as a visual consultant and visiting assistant professor at Pratt Institute during the day, and makes small booklets and zines at night. Sena enjoys visual narrative, mainly using ink and graphite materials, especially portraying international myths, religious parables and carrying a voice for feminism and diversity.
What is your background and how did you start your journey in the art world?
“Before I started my career as an illustrator, I grew up moving/living in different cultures and languages. The more I tried to adjust to the unfamiliarity, the more I sensed differences between myself and the environment. I believe that there are many outsiders - as I felt in my childhood. And just like most of them, I tried to find my way into art and cinema to communicate within new communities, and it helped me to overcome many cultural barriers.”
What inspires you most?
“The work environment for illustrators can be quite isolated, especially through this global pandemic. Illustrators communicate with clients mostly via emails, texts, or short zoom calls. Working alone in my own space sometimes makes me feel so small, and my time stops when everyone else moves forward.
So I started to draw my favorite moments in seasons to document great and small memories as a side project. In 2020, I finally finished a zine called ‘Flip, Flop, Tick, Tock’. Each page indicates 24 hours of my day, 12 months in each spread and 4 seasons in full circle. Once you read the whole zine, you have read about my full year. I love the idea that time flows, and each season in a new year feels refreshing and welcoming, passing by us smoothly.”
What themes do you pursue? Is there an underlying message in your work?
“I love the metaphors in religions and mythologies. I see similarities in both areas, where metaphors were being used to describe supernatural phenomenon’s or events when people couldn’t find scientific explanations in history. I see those metaphorical symbols as romantic efforts to either warn or ease people’s minds, using storytelling.
I enjoy using metaphors as visual elements in my work, to speak out about feminism and its strength. Growing up in a conservative society, Asian culture forced me to be a passive and submissive girl. If I did not choose my job as an illustrator or artist, maybe I would have turned into someone who did not have the courage to say NO to that.”
“Broadening my perspective, I know I can speak out in my own metaphoric symbols in drawings, about stories of women, and how we survive through many stigmas and struggles. Studying feminism and expressing this using my own narratives makes me tougher and stronger as an artist and a person.”
How would you describe your work?
“My work is highly detailed, linear drawings. My work shows the women I would want to be: confident, fearless, and not hesitant of showing curvaceous bodies. Growing up in a community that mostly has one size clothing for women, I spent my childhood without confidence. On that note, I would say my work is made of my hopes and desires, using metaphors.”
Which artists influence you most?
“Hieronymus Bosch, Toulouse Lautrec and Lorenzo Mattotti. I saw Lorenzo Mattotti’s black ink drawing book called ‘Chambres/Rooms/Stanze’.
I remember sitting in the empty studio at night and watching the book over and over in hopes of absorbing his sensibility and expressions. It has been a couple of years since I started making zines(small booklets). I still wish to make a book as powerful as his book.”
What is your creative process like?
“I enjoy walking outside to clear my head and to think about rough concepts.
Once I have rough storytelling ideas in my mind, I draw my thoughts in black and white on paper, and scan them to finish in a digital process. It is easier for me to focus on silhouettes and figures in black and white using ink, pens and or graphite mediums and then colorize in Adobe suite. In other words, I use both traditional and digital mediums for my illustration.”
“I want the women in my work to be free from these rules or restraints and follow the life that I would want to live.”
What is an artist’s role in society and how do you see that evolving?
“As an illustrator and graphic designer who believes in social changes that art brings into the community, I believe that we use art as a medium to convey messages that interact with individuals to groups, generations to bigger communities. There are so many values we communicate in visual language, and our role is to point the directions to where and how we should move forward in the future. I get excited when social design addresses problems hidden in our lives, and unfolds the process to solve the core of those issues. We can make our society more understanding and accepting of diversity through art and design.”
Have you had any noteworthy exhibitions you'd like to share?
“I recently joined a group show ‘Wilderness II’ co-curated by the Antler Gallery from Portland and a talented illustrator, Teagan White, along with her solo show in NYC. It was a showcase for the gallery to check on the New York art scene to celebrate the value of the gallery with new artists and creators. I was honored to be part of the in-person show along with amazing artists, after the long pandemic.
It felt great to have receptions and interact with passionate people again, as well as being introduced to a new part of the art community. If I have a chance to visit Portland again, I would love to visit the Antler Gallery space and see more great works in admiration of nature and life, as the gallery is in partnership with the Audubon Society of Portland.”
Website: www.kwonsena.com
Instagram: @kwonsenart
