FML Artist Spotlight: Jiwon Ra

Jiwon Ra approaches art as a record of lived transition, shaped by years of relocation and the shifting meanings of home. Born in South Korea and raised between England, Hong Kong, and Japan, her early life unfolded across shifting geographies, languages, and rhythms. Each place left its own imprint, shaping not only how she understands identity, but how she approaches making itself. Now based in New York, Ra works as a multidisciplinary artist across ceramics, wire, painting, sculpture, and fashion, bringing a practiced sensitivity to how meaning changes with context.

Rather than anchoring her work to a single medium or place, Ra allows movement to remain central. Her practice reflects a lived familiarity with transition, the accumulation of memory, and the quiet labor of carrying fragments of home from one place to the next. Containers, vessels, and fragmented forms recur throughout her work, mirroring the ways personal histories are held, protected, and reconfigured over time.

On January 27, Ra launches an online portfolio that brings together past and ongoing work across disciplines. Conceived as both archive and living record, the site presents sculptural objects, paintings, fashion-informed works, and process documentation within a single space. It offers a view into a practice that resists reduction, prioritizing continuity and evolution over fixed identity. The platform also includes a small selection of handmade ceramic jewelry boxes, functional objects that extend her ongoing exploration of containment, intimacy, and memory.

Below, Ra speaks with FML about growing up between cultures, working across disciplines, and allowing ambiguity to remain an active part of her practice.

FML: How does your upbringing across South Korea, England, Hong Kong, and Japan continue to shape your creative perspective today?

JR: Growing up across multiple cultural contexts cultivated an early sensitivity to translating differences in the unspoken rules and pace of each place. Rather than to internalize a singular visual language, I learned early on that meaning shifts depending on context. Today, my work is shaped by living between cultures rather than fully inside one.

FML: In what ways did frequent relocation influence your understanding of memory and belonging?

JR: Frequent relocation destabilized ideas of permanence. Places, routines, and relationships were often temporary, which made me more aware of how easily things disappear. Belonging became less about geography and more about what could be carried forward— i.e. habits, objects, gestures. This is where my interest in containment and preservation began: how do you hold onto something without freezing it in time?

 

FML: How do you navigate the emotional tension between opportunity and loss that comes with relocation?

JR: I don’t try to resolve it. Opportunity and loss exist simultaneously. Relocation expands possibility while erasing familiarity, and my work holds that tension. Making becomes a way to acknowledge what is gained and what is left behind without privileging one over the other.

FML: Can you describe your interest in containers and vessels as recurring forms in your practice?

JR: A box can hold something precious, but it can also restrict. I’m interested in how these forms suggest care, control, memory, and absence simultaneously. They mirror the way personal history is stored—never fully accessible, but also never fully sealed.

FML: How does your New York base influence your current practice compared to past places you have lived?

JR: Unlike previous places, New York allows multiple identities to coexist without needing resolution, and that openness aligns with how I work.

FML: How did your education in Fashion Design and Fine Art at Parsons inform your multidisciplinary approach?

JR: Studying Fashion Design and Fine Art simultaneously allowed me to move fluidly between concept and function. Fashion taught me about the construction under constraint, whereas Fine Art allowed for ambiguity and together they shaped a practice where form, material, and context are equally important.

FML: What drew you to working across so many disciplines rather than focusing on a single medium?

JR: I never experienced identity as singular, so working in one medium feels limiting. Different ideas require different forms; moving between disciplines allows me to respond precisely rather than force everything into one material language. Only then the work is able to translate rather than be categorized.

FML: What challenges come with maintaining a multidisciplinary practice in a contemporary art context?

JR: The primary challenge is legibility. Multidisciplinary work resists easy categorization, which can be uncomfortable in systems that prefer clarity… but that resistance is also its strength. It reflects the complexity of lived experience rather than a simplified narrative, which I love.

FML: How do you decide when a work belongs to fashion, sculpture, or fine art—or when it exists in between?

JR: I don’t decide upfront. The work reveals its position through context and interaction over time. Many pieces exist comfortably in between and I’ve learned to allow that ambiguity to remain rather than forcefully label it. It all informs each other conceptually and I hope by presenting the different disciplines together online, it invites viewers to see continuity and one big evolving investigation rather than separate/parallel outputs.

 

FML: What do you hope visitors take away from engaging with your online archive?

JR: I hope visitors sense continuity rather than conclusion, ideally with an understanding of my thinking process and intentionality. The archive isn’t meant to present a finished identity, but an evolving one.

Taken together, Ra’s work reads less as a fixed body of objects and more as an ongoing record of movement, accumulation, and care. Her online archive does not attempt to resolve the questions her practice raises, but instead makes space for them to remain open. In tracing the through lines between disciplines, places, and materials, Ra offers a portrait of an artist committed to continuity over conclusion, and to honoring the complexity of a life shaped in transit.