Selenas Mountain is pleased to present Bathing in Public, a solo exhibition by New York based Korean American artist Christina Yuna Ko. Contributing to the conversation around the Asian diaspora, Ko’s work addresses domesticity and our common human experience with interior spaces in a vivid pastel palette. Reflecting on the recent closures of communal spaces due to the pandemic, for this exhibition the artist has created a fully immersive installation inspired by the Korean public bath.

Made to address a lack of a bathtub within the home, a public bath is an extension of the domestic space, an interstitial private/public space. Utilized for it’s functionality and not as a luxury, a public bath is a fixture in a neighborhood given to those who need it. Open to the public, the bath house is a place that shapes our social and cultural understanding, where we adopt certain customs and permeates these behaviors into a broader community.

“Having grown up outside of Korea, I accessed public bath culture mainly through Korean dramas or variety shows that packaged it into a generalized, abstracted and aestheticized form. These second hand imaginings influenced my perception of bath culture’s place in society, more so than direct experience.

A public bath is a space imbued with multiple purposes. It is a site of bonding between family and friends, a means to take care of yourself, a place of clacking plastic slippers, tiled walls, and baths the size of small swimming pools. It is a site where you can relax, while enacting the daily life ritual of washing your body. It is a site to crack hard-boiled eggs, drink energy drinks and dip your feet; where plastic shower caddies double as grocery bags.

In re-imagining this space, I wanted to capture the moments that encapsulate the experience of a public bath and place it into a language of cultural significance. Looking back on 2020, when many of these spaces closed, I wanted to examine how a communal space such as this one, builds culture and impacts community.” —Christina Yuna Ko

Christina Yuna Ko (b. 1990, Flushing, NY) is a Korean American artist living and working in Queens, NY. She received her BFA from Cornell University in 2013, and has since then shown her work in Los Angeles, CA, Washington D.C., and in NYC. Selected exhibitions include: “Night Scenes”, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Brooklyn, NY; “In Good Taste”, Dinner Gallery, New York, NY; “Futures Ever Arriving”, Chelsea Market, New York, NY; “Internal Arrangements”, Trestle Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; “Downloading Place”, Wave Hill, Bronx, NY; and “Crossover: East and West”, Korean Cultural Center, Washington D.C.. Her work has been featured in Gallery Gurls, the Arcade Project Zine, Hiss Magazine, The Fader magazine, The Washington Post, and Ballpit Magazine.
