For anyone that speaks the Korean language, unni is immediately familiar as a term that signifies kinship and closeness, used by women to refer to older individuals of the same gender. Embedded in this innocuous everyday terminology, nevertheless, are premises of social structures that touch on such issues as subjectivity, sexuality, and community. As a sign of proximity, the word raises the question of under what circumstances unni might be used instead of other honorifics. Plenty of queer men also call each other unni regardless of their age, which suggests how the seemingly immutable gender dynamics in Korea has been stretched and subverted in the fringes. Unni also strikes a balance between a sense of care and responsibility, as she is expected to know better, to have been through it already, and to guide the younger ones. By embracing its various layers as a guiding framework to contextualize the works of the participating artists, the exhibition seeks to identify the radical possibilities of this ordinary word that helps us reimagine how to exist with each other.
To that end, unni (언니) brings together works that emphasize surface, tactility, openness, and intimacy, considering how each object opens up to new potentialities of the term. Candice Lin’s American Snack is a humorous poncho-like garment featuring a double-sided painting of skeletal human bodies, hyena-like beasts, and cats wrestling with each other in a Laocoön-like scenery, on which pockets are sewn to house boxes of treats. Despite its violence, the work proposes a flippant, inviting gesture, as viewers are encouraged to rummage through the pockets and find the apparently “innocent” candy boxes that have lewd, cartoonish images pasted underneath its cover. Haneyl Choi's suspended sculpture In the act of dying 죽는 중 combines organic and geometric forms to evoke a state of being: just like a body mind-explosion, the cubical stainless steel pipes wrapped in oil paint erupt outward, its white filaments arcing into the air around a dense, vertebral core. Meanwhile, Dongho Kang’s paintings produce an eerie interplay of distance and proximity, as the artist repurposes images found from sources ranging from black and white films to the Internet, reconstructing the sequence of events that are seemingly familiar and yet estranging like a forensic expert. In Wrench, Kang fixes his gaze on the uncanny dynamic between a needle-nose plier and a wrench. The plier is gripping onto the wrench as a jeweler would handle a delicate finding; the dangling miniature object insinuates that the canvas captured a moment of transit, the wrench on the move from one place to another.
Throughout, history, and the archive emerge as generative thematic concerns that connect the practices of individual artists to the notion of unni. For Grim Park, the history of Buddhist art that spans thousands of years offers a playground for subversion and queering. Shimhodo_Daze plays on a particular genre of Buddhist painting referred to as Shipwoodo—roughly translated as “pictures in the search of ox”—which illustrates the varying steps of meditation practices and the final attainment of nirvana through the metaphor of finding a lost ox. In Park’s version, the figurative ox is swapped out for a tiger, and the calm buddha is replaced by a boyish figure holding a golden knife with a white owl perched on top. Cirilo Domine, on the other hand, draws from the vernacular cultures of the Philippines, where he was born. Compass overlays the forms of two gendered versions of the Filipino barong/camisa—the traditional embroidered garment worn at formal occasions—into a single diagrammatic structure, their symmetries and divergences made visible as skeletal form.
In a similar vein, Nanay recreates a nurse’s cap into a form that reads equally as headdress, spacecraft, or technological apparatus. Though the reference here may be personal, as the artist’s own mother was a nurse, the sculpture also touches on the sociopolitical dimension of the Filipino diaspora as so many women from the nation have left their own homeland to provide the labor of care for others.
Rather than illustrate sisterhood, the works in unni (언니) probe how we address each other and position ourselves in the wider world. And though there is no singular answer to this question—one that harkens back to fundamental questions of the human condition—unni suggests that muddying the waters a bit is both liberating and empowering. After all, that is key to making the most fascinating art, and perhaps to living the most fascinating life.
—Harry C. H. Choi
Candice Lin (b. 1979, Concord; lives and works in Los Angeles) received an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute (2004) and a BA from Brown University (2001). Lin is currently faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles. Selected solo exhibitions have been held at Whitechapel Gallery, London (2025); Jameel Arts Center, Dubai (2024); Spike Island, Bristol (2022); Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (2022); Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Cambridge (2021); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2021); and Guangdong Times Museum, Guangzhou (2021). Selected group exhibitions have been held at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2025); Metropolitan Museum of Art (2025); Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2024); 14th Gwangju Biennale (2023); 59th Venice Biennale (2022); and Prospect.5, New Orleans (2021). Lin is a recipient of Ruth Award (2024), Arnoldo Pomodoro Sculpture Prize (2023), Joan Mitchell Foundation Award (2019), and Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (2017).
Lin’s work is in the collections of Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.
Cirilo Domine (b. Ilocos; lives and works in Los Angeles) received an MFA from the University of California, Irvine (1996) and a BA from the University of California, Los Angeles (1993). Selected solo exhibitions and performances have been held at Palm Springs Art Museum (2018); Commonwealth and Council (2012); MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House, West Hollywood (2010); Whittier College Art Gallery (1996); and Deepriver Gallery, Los Angeles (1994). Selected group exhibitions have been held at Eagle Rock Center for the Arts (2019); M+B, Los Angeles (2018); Pinta*Dos Philippine Art Gallery, San Pedro (2018); Nan Rae Gallery, Woodbury University, Burbank (2017); Commonwealth and Council (2016, 2010); Boston Center for the Arts (2013); Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (2007); Korean American Museum, Los Angeles (2003); and Guggenheim Gallery, Chapman University, Orange (2003).
Dongho Kang (b. 1994, Seoul; lives and works in Seoul) received an MFA (2021) and a BFA (2019) from Korea National University of Arts, Seoul. Selected solo exhibitions have been held at Sungkok Art Museum, Seoul (2025); Whistle, Seoul (2023); and Keep in Touch, Seoul (2020). Selected group exhibitions have been held at WESS, Seoul (2022); YOU AND US, Seoul (2021); Whistle, Seoul (2021); and Kimsechoong Museum, Seoul (2020).
Grim Park (b. 1987, Seoul; lives and works in Seoul) received a BFA from Dongguk University, Gyeongju (2016). Selected solo exhibitions have been held at THEO, Seoul (2024); A.SINGLE.PIECE, Sydney (2024); Studio Concrete, Seoul (2021); UARTSPACE, Seoul (2021); and Bul-il Museum, Seoul (2018). Selected group exhibitions have been held at Art Sonje Center, Seoul (2026); Gallery Remicon, Jeju (2025); OCI Museum of Art, Seoul (2024); Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Ansan (2024); THEO, Seoul (2023, 2022); Park is a recipient of 22nd Songeun Art Award (2022) and Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture (2022).
Park’s work is in the collections of National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul; OCI Art Museum, Seoul; and Sunpride Foundation, Hong Kong.
Haneyl Choi (b. 1991, Seoul; lives and works in Seoul) received an MFA from the Korea National University of Arts, Seoul (2018) and a BFA from Seoul National University (2016). Selected solo exhibitions include: Art Sonje Center, Seoul (forthcoming); P21, Seoul (2022, 2021); Arario Museum, Seoul (2021); Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles (2018); and Hapjungjigu, Seoul (2017). Selected group exhibitions have been held at Art Sonje Center, Seoul (2026, 2020); Hauser & Wirth, Hong Kong (2025); 15th Gwangju Biennale (2024); Esther Schipper, Seoul (2024); Esther Schipper, Berlin (2023); Daegu Art Museum (2022); Para Site, Hong Kong (2021); Gallery Hyundai, Seoul (2021); Karma International, Zurich (2021); Ilmin Museum of Art, Seoul (2020); Asia Culture Center, Gwangju (2020); National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon (2019); and Total Museum, Seoul (2018). Choi is a recipient of Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture Grant (2020, 2018), Korea Arts Management Service Grant (2018), Gyeonggi Culture Foundation Grant (2018) and Emerging Artist of the year, Seoul Museum of Art (2017). Choi participated in residencies at Nanji Residency, Seoul Museum of Art (2021), and Seoul Art Space Geumcheon (2019).
Choi’s work is in the collections of Daegu Museum of Art; High Museum, Atlanta; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; and Sunpride Foundation, Hong Kong.