Yoona Hur is an artist currently based in New York City. She was born in Seoul but grew up in various cities across Canada and the United States —the desire to deepen her Asian identity and spirituality drove her journey as an artist after working as an architect for several years. Although she spent most of her life in the West, Korean heritage and Eastern philosophy became the root of inspiration for her ceramics and paintings. Hur preserves and reinterprets this rich cultural lineage: the full breath of Korean ceramic history, from ancient ritualistic earthenwares to the iconic Moonjars (dalhangari) from Joseon Dynasty that embody both Buddhist and Confucianist concepts. Hur’s paintings are composed of Korean mulberry paper Hanji which was used in traditional houses (hanok) as architectural elements and for literary artifacts. She also takes inspirations from the modern Korean painting movement called Dansaekhwha — becoming one with nature through the act of repetition and being sensitive to materiality and time was the defining philosophy of the works.
Her projects have been exhibited and acquired in the US, UK, Italy, S.Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Norway, Switzerland and France. Also, her works have been featured in Architectural Digest-Italia, Elle Decoration-France, NY Times - Tmagazine, Cereal, Dezeen, Masion Korea, Milk Decoration, Design Anthology, Surface and Wall Street Journal Magazine.
She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago (2006) and a Bachelor of Architecture from Cooper Union, Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture (2010). Prior to focusing on art, she was a project architect at Matthew Baird Architects, Diller Scofidio & Renfro and Agrest and Gandelsonas Architects in New York City. She’s been a guest lecturer at Cooper Union, the School of Architecture (2019) and at SCAD in Savannah, Georgia (2022).