Baker Artist Portfolios

Mina Cheon (천민정) PhD, MFA -- "HAUNTED KOREAS"

b. 1973 in Seoul, South Korea, lives in New York, Baltimore, Seoul

is a new media artist, scholar, and educator

Mina Cheon (MFA, PhD) is a new media artist, scholar, educator, and activist best known for her “Polipop” art inspired by Pop art and Social Realism. Her practice draws inspiration from the partition of the Korean peninsula, exemplified by her parallel body of work created under her North Korean alter ego, Kim Il Soon, in which she enlists a range of mediums, including painting, sculpture, video, installation, performance, and public projects to deconstruct and reconcile the precarious history and ongoing coexistence between North and South Korea. 

Cheon has exhibited internationally, including at the Inaugural Asia Society Triennial (2020-2021); Busan Biennale (2018); Baltimore Museum of Art (2018); American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, Washington, DC (2014); Sungkok Art Museum, Seoul (2012); and Insa Art Space, Seoul (2005). Her work is in the collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art, Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, and Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul. Cheon’s solo exhibitions include at the Ethan Cohen Gallery (2014, 2017-18, 2020-2021), Lance Fung Gallery (2002), and The Korea Society (2021) in New York; the Noyes Museum of Art of Stockton University in New Jersey (2018); Trunk Gallery (2014), Sungkok Art Museum (2012), and Insa Art Space (2004-5) in Seoul, Korea; Maryland Art Place (2012) and C.Grimaldis Gallery (2008) in Baltimore. Her latest solo show, “Haunted Koreas” (2022) at the American University Museum in Washington DC, was accompanied by an essay by critical theorist Avital Ronell. Cheon is represented by the Ethan Cohen Gallery in New York and has shown with the Stephanie Kim Gallery and Kate Shin Gallery in New York, the Simon Gallery and Trunk Gallery in Seoul, and the C.Grimaldis Gallery in Baltimore.

Cheon received her PhD in Philosophy of Media and Communications from the European Graduate School (EGS), European University for Interdisciplinary Studies, Switzerland; MFA in Imaging (Intermedia) + Digital Arts from the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC); MFA from the Hoffberger School of Painting, Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA); and BFA in painting from Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Korea. Cheon is an Ewha Global Fellow and has been a visiting professor and lecturer at Ewha Womans University and a mentor of Art-Uni-On, a global mentorship network by Hyundai Co. and the Seoul National University. She is the author of Shamanism + Cyberspace (Atropos Press, 2009), was a contributor for ArtUS, Wolgan Misool, New York Arts Magazine, Artist Organized Art, and was Associate Editor of the Media-N journal where she contributed critical essays covering SeMA Mediacity Seoul Biennale 2016 and the Venice Biennale 2017. She is currently a Professor Emerita of MICA and lives and works in New York.