Sun Park

Sun Park
January 16 – March 23, 2024
Opening Reception: Tuesday, January 16 | 5 to 8pm

A site-specific installation by Sun Park in /room/, juried by Aaron Harbour and Jackie Im.

Bulls in the City is a site-specific installation in /room/ by Sun Park, inspired by a story they wrote when they were eight (its title is this exhibition’s namesake). The childhood story approaches themes like perceived scarcity and competition for resources simply and directly: the only characters in the story, bulls, are male, and the resource they are fighting over is grass. Park brings this story into conversation with the experience of touching their hair–the long hair they once had, the short hair they now have. Reflecting on a recent experience of getting a men’s haircut for the first time, Park remembers touching the back of their head over and over again afterward, “a soothing stim that reminded me of touching a lawn.” Through works across writing, drawing, sculpture, and photography, many of which Park created specifically for Bulls in the City, the artist approaches their sensorial relationship to hair and grass, and their experience of gender from without and within.

Sun Park is a visual artist and writer based in San Francisco. Sensory overload, disassociation, collective effervescence, stimming: Park responds to bodily sensations that signal the connection between internal and external environments, the porous boundaries where identity is formed and altered. Park’s work is informed by their experience with the white Protestant church, Korean shamanism, and Bay Area landscapes.

Park holds an MFA from SFSU, was a fellow at Kearny Street Workshop’s Interdisciplinary Writer’s Fellowship, is a member of the Dong Ji Collective, and has presented work at SFAC Main Gallery, 41 Ross, and ICASF, among others. Lately, Park has been performing stand up.