Meet New NYFA Board Member: Young Yang Chung

“My advice for emerging artists would be to continue to expand their horizons; willfully accept new areas, materials, and perspectives; and to remain philosophically grounded.”

We are proud to introduce Young Yang Chung as one of our newest board members. We’re featuring her here in our ongoing series of blog posts dedicated to exceptional arts advocates who operate behind the scenes here at NYFA. Chung took time from her busy schedule to discuss her interest in NYFA, her advice for emerging artists, and her latest projects including the below exhibition: 

Title: The Movement of Herstory: Korean Embroidery: The Life and Artworks of Young Yang Chung
When: Thursday, March 2 – Thursday, April 27, 2017; Opening Reception: Wednesday, March 8, 2017, 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Where: Gallery Korea, 460 Park Avenue, Fl. 6, New York, NY 10022

Young Yang Chung is a textile historian and embroiderer. She earned a Ph.D. at New York University in 1976, with a doctoral dissertation on the origins of embroidery and its historical development in China, Japan, and Korea. Through lectures, demonstrations, writings, teachings, workshops, and exhibitions, she has endeavored to foster appreciation of an art form often stigmatized as “women’s work” and challenged the notion of textiles as “minor arts.” 

Her legacy includes a body of groundbreaking publications such as The Art of Oriental Embroidery (1979) and Silken Threads: A History of Embroidery in China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam (2005). She’s also the namesake, director, and curator of the Chung Young Yang Embroidery Museum, an exhibition, educational, and research facility at Sookmyung Women’s University in Seoul, Korea.

NYFA: What made you decide to join the NYFA board?

Young Yang Chung: I strongly support NYFA’s mission of empowering emerging artists and arts organizations. I come from a background in fiber arts, which is a relatively small field, and I welcome the chance to contribute to a cross-disciplinary organization that offers a larger perspective. Through my involvement with NYFA, I hope to increase awareness of the textile arts and help fiber artists see their own work within a larger context. I look forward to learning more about how NYFA so successfully and concretely supports artists in their professional development, and to helping artists working in textiles and other mediums to advance their art and thrive.

NYFA: Can you tell us about a project that you’re currently working on?

YYC: Most recently I have been working on an exhibition project featuring my own artwork called The Movement of Herstory: Korean Embroidery: The Life and Artworks of Young Yang Chung. This exhibition will be held at the Korean Cultural Center in New York from March 2 through April 27. Preparing the exhibition and its accompanying catalog was a particularly rewarding project for me, as it traces the parallel history of Korean embroidery and history of Korean women through my own life story and artworks. It is extremely gratifying to see my embroideries from the last fifty years – including monumental screens created for the presidential palace in Seoul – being brought together from museums and private collections in Korea and the US. Through this exhibition, as with my previous scholarship, I hope to enhance public knowledge and appreciation of embroidery and to challenge attitudes that disparage embroidery as a “craft” or minor art. Embroidery is an ancient and continually evolving art form, and the exhibition reveals that embroidery tells women’s history – herstory – like no other medium. I am grateful for a New York City venue that can bring this perspective to a global audience.

NYFA: What advice do you have for emerging artists?

YYC: My advice would be to continue to expand their horizons; willfully accept new areas, materials, and perspectives; and to remain philosophically grounded.

– Interview conducted by Amy Aronoff, Communications Officer

Images, from top: Young Yang Chung, Photo Credit: Un Ju Lee; Unity (Group of Fish), Photo Credit: John B. Taylor; Korean Musical Instruments, Photo Credit: John B. Taylor