Sun Young Kang (강선영) is a book and installation artist. Originally from South Korea, Kang resided in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, PA for over a decade and currently she is in Western New York. From small intimate books to room-size installations, she uses paper with its duality of strength and delicacy to create physical and conceptual space. Kang received her MFA in Book Arts/Printmaking from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA, and her BFA in Korean Painting from Ewha Woman’s University in Seoul, Korea.
Kang has been named the 2021 UAH Contemporary Art Fellow funded by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. She is a recipient of the West Collection LIFTS Grant and Acquisition Award, 2020; the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYSCA/NYFA) Artist Fellowship in Architecture/ Environmental Structures/ Design, 2019; the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant Award, 2017-2018; PRIX WHANKI 2017 from Whanki Museum/ Foundation in Seoul, Korea and the Center for the Emerging Visual Artists Fellowship in Philadelphia, 2013-2015. Kang was an Artist in Residence at Virginia Center for Creative Arts in 2024, Yaddo in 2023, Coalesce Center for Biological Art at the State University of New York at Buffalo, Vermont Studio Center in 2019, and Siao-Long Cultural Park supported by COPE NYC and the Tainan City Government in Taiwan in 2017.
Her work has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally at venues including Whanki Museum in Seoul, Korea; Nanchizi Museum in Beijing, China; Museum Jindřichohradecka in South Bohemia, Czech Republic; Queens Museum, NY; Whatcom Museum, WA; Carnegie Museum of Arts; Pennsylvania State Museum; the Susquehanna Art Museum, PA; Pittsburgh Center for the Arts; Mainline Art Center and Philadelphia Art Alliance, PA. Her work resides in the West Collection, Pennsylvania State Museum, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, Witney Museum of American Art, Museum of Modern Art Franklin Furnace Artist book collection, and numerous libraries’ special collections.