Textile Tuesday: Julia Kwon’s Unapologetically Asian Face Mask

by: Susan Brown, Acting Head of Textiles at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

The interdisciplinary artist Julia Kwon is best known for her installation-scale works in which she wraps life-sized female figures with her own interpretation of bojagi–traditional Korean patchwork wrapping cloths–to comment on the objectification of Asian women.

During the Covid-19 pandemic Kwon, like many people with sewing skills, turned to making cloth face masks. The visible layer of her face masks is made from machine and hand-stitched silk patchwork, backed with heavy cotton canvas. Kwon learned basic sewing skills from her mother at home and grew up using and seeing bojagi while living in Korea as a child. While working toward her MFA at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, she started studying the technique more formally, returning to Korea on a fellowship to conduct field research.

Her “Unapologetically Asian” mask series, while drawing public attention to the importance of mask-wearing, was also a response to the surge in anti-Asian violence in the United States during the pandemic. Despite the fact that health experts recommended wearing non-medical cloth face coverings to prevent the spread of the virus, and that face masks were eventually mandated in public spaces across much of the country, the early adoption of masks by Asian communities –due in part to their experiences with the SARS epidemic –“…has largely been perceived as an unnecessary overreaction, a proof of illness, or an open invitation to commit hate crimes during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Kwon wrote on her website. [1]

By using this recognizable symbol of Korean identity on her masks, Kwon embraced her ethnic identity in order to confront Covid-19-related racism, and she invited others to wear the masks in solidarity to bring awareness to the issue of rising xenophobia. The artist frequently initiates community-building collaborative projects, and the masks, although created in the solitude of spring 2020’s lockdown, became a locus of conversation through the stories wearers shared with Kwon on social media.“I have found it rewarding to hear from fellow Korean and Asian Americans who have felt seen and supported through my work,” she told Cooper Hewitt, “as well as to witness solidarity from others who helped share the work and raised awareness of the rise in anti-Asian violence during the COVID-19 pandemic.” [2]

Cooper Hewitt acquired the mask as part of its Responsive Collecting Initiative, and it will be featured in the upcoming exhibition Design and Healing: Creative Responses to Epidemics, opening this December.

[1] http://www.juliakwon.com/unapologetically-asian.html, accessed April 27, 2021.

[2] An email exchange between the artist and Susan Brown, Associate Curator, March 17, 2021.