Kwonny is a Seattle-based artist born in New York whose practice began while she was living in Australia, where she was first drawn to the local flora and fauna. Her canvases feature animals and mythic figures depicted mid-fight or mid-flight, often involving stretched material and surface tension. Her use of negative space functions as both compositional and conceptual device, holding the friction between history and mythology, predator and prey, domestication and wildness.
Kwonny
Artist Process
Her commission for Australia draws on her experience as a Korean-American negotiating the effects of dual cultures and migration. Her work is shaped by years moving between the Pacific Northwest and Australia, and the piece holds the question of who counts as Australian and who carries Australia with them. It is made by an artist who has lived inside the answer.
Instagram: @kwonny.art
Our Collaboration
In collaboration with SeattleFWC26 and Populus Seattle, we’ve commissioned fifteen new works installed across the neighborhood, timed to the World Cup. The artists who painted these pieces didn’t just visit Pioneer Square. They lived at Populus Seattle and worked at RailSpur Studios, developing their commissions in the same environment where their work will be experienced.
For a few magical weeks this summer, the World Cup matches will bring people from all over the world to our doorstep in Seattle, but what we hope to leave behind lasts longer than the matches.
Lookin’ at You Socceroo
RailSpurSee Other Artists
Night Moves
RailSpur
Fools Goal
RailSpur
Lookin' at You Socceroo
RailSpur
Red Devils
RailSpur
United in the Game
RailSpur
Flowers to the Game
RailSpur