In the Impossibly Connected series, Kang explores her feeling of being marginal, living between and attempting to painfully bridge two cultural realities. Formed by two primary materials – bricks and the artist's own shed hair – the work explores temporal and spatial relations, a theme of persistent interest for the artist. A brick, broken in half, represents a split self, two identities and the space between the past and the future. Shed hair symbolizes the detached self and memory loss, suggesting the weakened connection between the artist’s current and past selves and between her and her home country. Kang’s process starts with repeatedly hammering on the brick to create a crack, eventually splitting the brick into two pieces. She stains the broken pieces with house paint, photographs them and then, again, in a repetitive movement, embroiders her own shed hair onto the two-dimensional photograph. Kang sees her work as an experiment to visualize the impossible attempt to reconnect the two broken pieces. The repetitive action reflects the concept of ourselves as the embodiment of time passing between the past and the future. One cannot connect two heavy objects, such as bricks, with delicate human hair; the connection is made possible only on a two-dimensional rendering – a photograph of the brick pieces.

Sun Young Kang is a book and installation artist. Originally from South Korea, Kang resided in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, PA for over a decade and currently lives in western New York. From small intimate books to room-size installations, she uses paper, with its duality of strength and delicacy, to create physical and conceptual space. As an immigrant who bridges two cultures, Kang feels she belongs to neither but, rather, resides on the edge of each. Her work reflects that space in between, a boundary both separating and connecting the two through a personal, emotional resonance. Visually, Kang’s work is minimal, delicate and obsessively repetitive. “The repetition in my practice symbolizes, or is even the embodiment of, the passage of time – time made spatial,” the artist states. “My art has always focused on the duality fundamental to human existence: of different realities, both in space and time, and the tension between them; the co-existence of contrasting ideas, how death implies life, how the material realm implies the intangible and how absence implies presence. To explore this, I create physical and symbolic spaces, ranging from large installations to small, intimate books. I see the audience as a critical component in completing my work. When the result is an installation, audiences not only immerse themselves in the experience of the space, but they also become a part of what others experience, thus contributing to the work's interactive aspect.” In 2007, Kang received her MFA in Book Arts/Printmaking from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA and her BFA in Korean Painting from Ewha Woman’s University in Seoul, Korea. Kang was named the 2021 UAH Contemporary Art Fellow, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) American Community Grant Program, at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. She is a recipient of the West Collection LIFTS Grant and Acquisition Award, 2020; the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYSCA/NYFA) Artist Fellowship in Architecture/ Environmental Structures/ Design; Vermont Studio Center Fellowship, 2019; Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant Award, 2017-2018; the PRIX WHANKI 2017 from Whanki Museum/ Foundation in Seoul, Korea and the Center for the Emerging Visual Artists Fellowship in Philadelphia, 2013-2015. Kang’s work has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions, nationally and internationally, at venues including Whanki Museum, Seoul Korea; Queens Museum, NY; Whatcom Museum, WA; Carnegie Museum of Arts, Pennsylvania State Museum; Susquehanna Art Museum, PA; Pittsburgh Center for the Arts and Mainline Art Center and Philadelphia Art Alliance, PA. Her work resides in the West Collection, Pennsylvania State Museum, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art Franklin Furnace Artist book collection and numerous libraries’ special collections.