Wendy Park
Region: Pacific Coast
Wendy Park is a Korean American painter whose work is an homage to her late father and mother who immigrated to Los Angeles during the 1980s. She utilizes a distinct, graphic aesthetic to reflect on the social and cultural backdrops of growing up in a working class Korean American family. Her canvases evoke a sense of nostalgia through the application of crisp lines and vibrant color, creating a dreamlike vantage point. The memories and experiences portrayed in Park’s work illuminate the closely enmeshed relationships between labor, leisure, consumption, and resourcefulness often experienced by many first-generation Americans during the 1990s. Through her depictions of cultural motifs, repurposed objects, and socioeconomic nuances, Park reveals an intimate narrative, capturing her family’s pursuit and manifestation of the American Dream. She hopes her practice and representations of Asian American nostalgia encourage curiosity about the commerce and culture of marginalized groups.