Reina Kwon (b. 1998, Republic of Korea) is a multidisciplinary artist in Toronto, Canada. Through painting and sculpture, she investigates irony, contradictions, and the absurdities of existence, using art to inquire beyond logic or science. She continues to explore interdisciplinary approaches, expanding her artistic language and fostering interconnective dialogue with the audience through her work. As a multidisciplinary artist, She explore the absurdities of existence through painting, sculpture, installation, and video. Her work challenges conventional narratives, embracing irony and contradiction to invite alternative perspectives.
The Frog Outside the Well
Acrylic on canvas, 14" x 14”, 2022
There’s a Korean idiom: “a frog in a well,” similar to “a fish in a pond doesn’t know the ocean.” I left home hoping to escape the narrowness of that well—only to realize I had entered another. I wasn’t in the ocean, just another pond. Being a foreigner didn’t mean freedom; it meant my existence was filtered through cultural expectations and racial assumptions. If I didn’t match those expectations, I wasn’t seen at all. The figure in the painting clings desperately to the wall, struggling to avoid falling into any well. This act of holding on is neither graceful nor gentle—it is violent, painful, and unnatural. Flesh, metaphorically, is torn by the effort. A thread, spat from the figure’s own mouth, binds it to the wall. This image embodies the torment of being suspended in a liminal space: caught between places, belonging neither here nor there, forced to stay, to perform, and to be seen through a lens that refuses to recognize the self. This work is not about assimilation or resolution. It is about that unbearable in-between space—where one cannot fall, yet cannot land either. A tension familiar to many who live as outsiders.
Ignorance is Bliss!
Single channel video, 10 minutes 6 seconds, 2024
As a stranger and a minority, speaking about my experiences and my country here felt like trying to sift a cake through a sieve. It could not pass through in its whole form; it had to be crushed, eventually becoming a mush where its original shape was impossible to recognize. What was filtered through was interpreted according to their tastes, conveniently used to build fixed stereotypes about the East within their minds. Have you ever felt as if you were speaking across an invisible wall—wanting to cross over it, but the other side won’t even allow you to try? If you haven’t, that’s alright. This work was conceived as an attempt to let those who have never faced such walls experience a glimpse of our lives. Ignorance is Bliss is a film essay designed to allow English-speaking audiences to directly experience how memories, cultures, and histories become distorted or fail to be fully conveyed across cultures. Therefore, I have prepared riddles through which we can be placed, even if just for a moment, on equal footing. Now, please try to solve these riddles in your own language.
