Kate Bang

she/her

I am split between two world views, Korean and Canadian. At eight years old, I immigrated to Canada from Korea. When I was 15, I moved out of my parent’s home with my 16-year-old sister. My understanding of home is fragmented due to moving several times to new homes, as many Canadian immigrants do. I lived in over 20 different homes in the past 28 years, which has impacted my identity, challenged my understanding of home and made me question the idea of belonging. I like to create works of realism and surrealism as a strategy to paint a pictorial space that offers others to access my memories, imagination and experiences of home. My painting is of domestic spaces that bring a sense of uneasiness because I am fascinated with presenting repressed feelings. I like to place these domestic homes in a non-safe space, the opposite of how a house should be recognized. However, I also like to impose order into these chaotic worlds that I have created. “Up There Somewhere” show a chaotic world that doesn’t make sense work. There is a boulder that helps hold other furniture. An umbrella above the bed is there for the resident to pull other wires closer. The objects are held on by each other, supporting each other. From my own cultural hybridity and relocating many times, I have learned that sometimes balance can be achieved by embracing the chaos.

instagram @katebang_
website katebang.com