Non-binary Korean-American artist Rachel Youn (b. 1994 in Pennsylvania, US) is an artist living and working in St. Louis, Missouri. Working across sculpture and installation, Youn sources materials with a history of aspiration and failure through online secondhand shopping. Youn rescues electric massagers from suburban limbo, fastening artificial plants to the machines to create kinetic sculptures that are clumsy, erotic, and absurd. Haunted by their immigrant father’s pursuit of the American dream, their work identifies with the replica that earnestly desires to be real, and the failed object that simulates care and intimacy.
Youn is a recipient of the Vermont Studio Center Fellowship and the 2020 Great Rivers Biennial Award. They received their BFA from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. Youn is currently an MFA candidate at the Yale School of Art.
Youn’s recent exhibitions include “Retrograde” (Galerie du Monde, Hong Kong, 2022); “Revival” (Soy Capitán, Berlin, 2022); “Greener than grass” (Truman State University Art Gallery, Kirksville, United States, 2022); “Sweeping the Chimney from the Mantle of the Earth” (Charlotte Street Foundation, Kansas City, United States, 2022); and “Gather” (Great Rivers Biennial, Contemporary Art Museum, St Louis, United States). Youn will have their debut New York solo show at Sargent’s Daughters in July 2022.
