Born 1981 in South Korea, she currently lives and works in New York an Seoul.
South Korean Jun Ahn was came to study in the US, where she graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in art history in 2006, followed by two years of postgraduate study of photography at the Pratt Institute. While at the Pratt, she had her first work displayed as part of group gallery exhibitions, and began work on the Self-Portrait project, which to date is her most prominent series of photographs which she regards as “a performance without an audience”, an end of youth of sorts, and a coming to terms with the future. In 2009 and 2010 she was awarded the Dean’s Scholarship at New York’s Parsons The New School for Design, and in 2011 received both the Dean's and a departmental scholarship. During this time her work received its first major exhibitions, including a joint exhibition with Kazue Taguchi at PS 122 in New York. Furthermore, Ahn has been selected as one of BJP’s 20
Photographers To Watch in 2013. Parsons awarded her a Master of Fine Arts with honours in January 2012, following which she enrolled in a PhD program in photography at Hongik University in Seoul.
EDUCATION
2013 Ph.D in Photography, Hongik Unvirsity, South Korea
2012 MFA in Photography, Parsons – The New School for Design, New York
2007 Photography, Pratt Institute, New York
2006 BA Art History, University of Southern California- Los Angeles
SELECTED SOLO & TWO PERSON EXHIBITIONS
2014 Self-Portrait Christophe Guye Galerie, Zürich, Switzerland
2013 New Heights, Kips Gallery, New York, NY, USA AHAF 13’Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Hong KongJun Ahn and Martin Kim, Wada Garou Co., Ltd., Tokyo
2012 Self portrait Anna Nova Gallery, St. Petersburg, Russia
2011 Jun Ahn and Ho Chang Chelsea West Gallery, New York, USA
2010 Perspectives Onishi Gallery, New York, USA Jun Ahn and Kazue Taguchi, PS 122 Gallery, New York, USA
AWARDS
2013 Asian Artist to Watch in 2013, from the China Morning Post, Hong Kong Ones To Watch, from The Journal of Photography, UK
2012 International Photography Award (Honorable Mention, Fine Art-Others Category) Belt 2012 (Photography), Korea New Caledonia Traveling Grant
New Caledonia Tourism Board/Kumsan Gallery
2011 2011 Graduate Directory, Wallpaper* Magazine, UK, for Hong Kong in my Mind
Exhibition Traveling Grant, Hong Kong Tourism Board Deans Scholarship, Parsons – The New School for Design, New York, USA Departmental Scholarship, Parsons – The New School for Design, New York, USA
2011 Deans Scholarship, Parsons – The New School for Design, New York, USA
2009 Deans Scholarship, Parsons – The New School for Design, New York, USA
Christophe Guye Galerie announce the solo exhibition of Jun Ahn (*1981, South Korea). The exhibition presents a comprehensive overview of « Self-Portrait », Jun Ahn’s most prominent series. The self-portrait has become de rigueur among female photographers since Cindy Sherman and Francesca Woodman made their now canonical works of the 1970s. Nikki Lee revived the genre in the late 90s with her studies of subcultures as self-portraits, and now the self-portrait has become almost a rite of passage among female photographers, who have been creating increasingly daring and specific versions of the genre. Jun Ahn’s suicidal self-portraits are a particularly unsettling, but captivating, addition to that tradition. They are paradoxical, conveying both the sense of the agency of a goddess or superwoman an...