©2016 JIHA MOON
Artadia has announced the awardees for its 2016 Atlanta awards: Jiha Moon and Cosmo Whyte. Each will receive $10,000 in unrestricted funds as well as access to the ongoing benefits of the Artadia Awards program.
Moon and Whyte were chosen from five finalists, including Kelly Kristin Jones, T. Lang, and Zipporah Thompson. Daniel Fuller, curator at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, and Katherine Jentleson, curator of folk and self-taught art at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, selected the two awardees.
Jiha Moon’s ceramics and painting combine international and domestic influences. Jentleson stated, “Jiha Moon does maximalism in the best way, saturating her painting and ceramics with signs and symbols that go in many exciting directions. The source she draws on, from Southern face jugs to Korean norigae are so diverse, allowing for work that is both humorously and seriously engaged in confrontations with the absurdity of our globalized, hyper-technologized society and the many cultural misunderstandings it nurtures.” Fuller added that Moon “perfectly exemplifies the new Atlanta.”
Cosmo Whyte explores themes of immigration and colonialism in his trans-disciplinary work. Fuller spoke about how Whyte’s performance, drawing, and sculpture “unpack the complexities of growing up within colonialism and maintaining identity. It is both highly personal and specific to each of us.”