Onnagata and Tiger

Chunbum Park

Chunbum Park is a South Korean artist who paints figuratively about his own desires based in fantasy and the beauty of the female form. Exploring gender fluidity, Park paints fantasies of himself appearing as a woman in order to reverse the power relations of the male artist and the female subject and because he finds the images that he created new and exciting. Since perception is an alternate form of reality, and images are sufficient vehicles to express this reality, Park places his transformation as a woman in his paintings as a form of fantasy. Through his paintings, Park changes the nature of the male gaze by engaging in self gaze based in fantasy. Androgyny is a key trait that enables the convergence of femininity and masculinity in his works. His process is similar to putting on makeup and plastic surgery, changing up and beautifying some parts of him that appear masculine. Park was born in Seoul, South Korea in 1991 and came to America in 2000 to study English and attend school. He attended Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville, TN, in his high school years. Subsequently, he studied art at the Art Students League of NY and obtained his BFA in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts in 2020. He invented an art auction card game called ArtBid and runs a website called Emerging Artists Collective, where he interviews other emerging artists. He is currently an MFA Fine Arts Studio candidate at the Rochester Institute of Technology.