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Twisted Nature

I create the patterns for my neo-Victorian wallpaper from animal drawings that I make using ballpoint pen. I prefer this medium because lines are not dark the first time I draw them the way they are with a regular ink pen. That allows me to use a cross-hatching technique of layered lines and get more shading and depth, as well as more fuzziness, which is especially good for drawing furry animals.

My large-scale drawings, which are inspired by seventeenth-century Dutch still-life paintings, are framed and displayed against my animal-patterned wallpaper. The installation calls to mind a classical European aesthetic. When audiences look closely, however, they find that the subjects are mutants. My intent is to raise questions about the place of nature in modern life. Should the results of such processes as genetic engineering be construed as a part of the natural world? Or should we think of nature as existing independently of technology? —Joo Lee Kang, M.F.A.11

Joo Lee Kang will have solo exhibitions of her drawings and installations at Boston’s Gallery NAGA in September and at the University of New Hampshire Museum of Art in October.