Pictured above: Installation view of Higher Women East and West, 12 Visitors from the East and Majestic Visitor. Photo by Phil Hutinet for East City Art.
Where You Belong by Ju Yun is currently on view at Harmony Hall’s main gallery in Fort Washington, Maryland. It’s a dense, materially driven exhibition that leans hard into color, surface and accumulation. It’s a show that could easily fall apart under its own weight, but for the most part, it holds together.
Ju Yun, a Korean American artist with more than 30 years of experience, works somewhere between painting and craft. That distinction matters here. These aren’t paintings with a few added elements—they’re built objects. Found materials are everywhere: tiles, beads, textiles, sequins, polymer clay, fragments of consumer goods. The surfaces are packed—in some works, almost aggressively so.
At a glance, the work reads like street art—bright, graphic, layered, a little chaotic. You expect visual overload. And to be clear, some of the pieces do push right up against that edge. But the installation gives the work enough room to breathe, and if you spend time with it, the density starts to resolve into something more deliberate.
Pictured above: Ju Yun, Higher Women East and West. Photo by Phil Hutinet for East City Art.
A pair of works, Higher Women East and West, lays out one of the exhibition’s central tensions pretty clearly. Circular forms made from synthetic materials and hair split into two sides—black hair with red Chinese New Year elements versus pink hair with faux pearls. East and West. It’s not subtle, but it works as an anchor point for the rest of the show.
Pictured above: Ju Yun, 12 Visitors from the East (detail). Photo by Phil Hutinet for East City Art.
The series 12 Visitors from the East is based on the Chinese zodiac, with each panel representing a different animal sign. Ju Yun isn’t trying to follow traditional versions. She simplifies and reshapes the figures, using bold color and layered materials that lean toward street art. The animals are still recognizable, but they’re not treated as exact representations.
Pictured above: Ju Yun, The Majestic Visitor. Photo by Phil Hutinet for East City Art.
Where the show gets more interesting is in the larger, more constructed pieces. The Majestic Visitor is a good example—horns, eyes, temple-like forms, emojis, all layered together into something that shouldn’t cohere but mostly does. It’s busy, but it’s not random. There’s a logic to how the materials are stacked and how your eye is led through them.
Pictured above: installation view in the center of Harmony Hall’s main gallery. Photo by Phil Hutinet for East City Art.
That said, not everything lands equally. Some of the more heavily layered works feel closer to experiments—testing how much can be added before the structure gives out. You see the idea, but the composition doesn’t always fully lock in.
Pictured: Ju Yun, Birth of Mother Nature. Photo by Phil Hutinet for East City Art.
On the other hand, Birth of Mother Nature pulls back in a way that’s surprisingly effective. It drops most of the material excess and lets the image carry more of the weight. It’s one of the few moments in the show where things quiet down, and it stands out because of it.
Pictured above: Ju Yun, The Dancing Tiger (Detail). Photo by Phil Hutinet for East City Art.
The Dancing Tiger moves in the opposite direction—more materials, but more control. The composition is tighter, the layering more intentional. Plexiglass elements push the work outward into space, and there’s a clearer sense of structure underneath everything.
Pictured above: Ju Yun, Seven Tigers and a Goblin. Photo by Phil Hutinet for East City Art.
The strongest piece in the exhibition is probably Seven Tigers and a Goblin, which anchors the back of the gallery. It’s still complex, still layered, but the materials are doing specific jobs—forming eyes, hair, features—rather than just building density. The UV lighting helps, but the real difference is that the composition feels resolved. It’s not just accumulation; it’s construction.
Pictured above: Seven Tigers and a Goblin (detail). Photo by Phil Hutinet for East City Art.
What Ju Yun is doing here is reworking what painting can be by fully committing to mixed media—not as an add-on, but as the core of the practice. The craft element isn’t decorative. It’s structural.
Conceptually, the work sits in an interesting place. A lot of artists working with found materials lean into critique—consumer culture as excess, waste, contradiction. That’s not really what’s happening here. Ju Yun seems more interested in how these systems—consumer objects, religious imagery, natural forms—can coexist. Not cleanly, but not in conflict either.
Everyone won’t respond the same way to that conclusion. There’s a level of optimism built into the work that feels almost at odds with how these materials are usually framed. But it’s also what gives the show its edge. In her work, Ju Yun isn’t trying to dismantle anything. She’s trying to hold things together.
Where You Belong isn’t perfect, but it doesn’t need to be. At its best, it’s focused, visually sharp, and clear about what it’s doing. And in a show this packed—materially and visually—that clarity goes a long way.
Ju Yun Where You Belong is on view March 23-May 2 at Harmony Hall Arts Center. 10701 Livingston Road, Fort Washington, MD 20744. Contact the gallery at 301.203.6070. For more information visit the gallery’s website at www.pgparks.com/event_list/ju-yun-where-you-belong-public-reception
