Biography
Isolina Minjeong (b. 1997, Chicago, IL) is a New York City–based artist working across ceramic sculpture and public installation. Drawing from ancestral statuary traditions and contemporary visual culture, she develops figurative works that examine protection, threshold, and collective memory. Influenced by her Korean and Peruvian heritage, her practice bridges historical symbolism with present-day environments.
Minjeong earned her BFA in Ceramics from the Maryland Institute College of Art. She has exhibited internationally, including presentations at Ceramic Brussels (2026), The Other Art Fair (2025), NADA Miami (2023), and Spring/Break Art Show (2022). Her work situates contemporary folklore within sculptural form, balancing monumentality with emotional weight.
Statement
Isolina Minjeong’s practice builds a contemporary mythology rooted in traditions of guardianship. Drawing from ancestral statuary placed at tombs, temples, and funerary sites, she reinterprets protective figures for the present. Her work examines how symbols of protection and ritual can persist within modern life.
Working across ceramic sculpture and large-scale muralism, Minjeong creates figurative forms that feel both ancient and immediate. In clay, her sculptures carry visible seams, weight, and surface tension—suggesting endurance and inheritance. In public space, her murals extend this mythology into architecture, transforming walls and asphalt into sites of watchfulness and quiet strength.
Rather than replicate historical forms, she translates them through bold geometry and graphic clarity, filtering ancestral symbolism through visual languages shaped by manga, illustration culture, and toy design. Her figures function as sentinels—presences rather than monuments—bridging lineage and contemporary image-making to construct a living folklore where the ancient and the new coexist.