Artist Statement
As an artist working with digital and living media, I create social sculptures. The landscape has become the framework through which I unfold stories about others and myself using a combination of artistic and scientific processes that manifest as social engagements, interactive installations, photography, and bio-art. I create interfaces to elicit participation as a reflection and critique of our political and social systems. Working with communities, I innovate ideas to be realized through research, chance, and collaboration. My long-term projects include: -ProfileUS: Invasive Species examines the interconnections made by humans and other species that have migrated to the US and are adapting to their new or established environments through the lens of art, technology, and biopolitics. -The Fairy Rings is a series that uses mycoremediation and art to develop and innovate bioremediation practices for residents in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and elsewhere.
Jan Mun_The Fairy Rings: Mycoremediation @ ExxonMobil Petroleum Remediation Site, 2013_(Documentation-Installation detail of pink mushroom jump starting ecology and mycoremediation bags around monitoring well) In Greenpoint, Brooklyn at the ExxonMobil Petroleum Remediation Site, the epicenter of one of the largest oil spills in the US. Mycoremediation bags are installed in a maze of "fairy rings" around the monitor wells that tack the size of the oil plume.
Bio
Jan Mun creates social sculptures with digital and living media. Mun received a MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and BFA from SUNY New Paltz. Her work has been in exhibitions at the Queens Museum, City Museum of New York, The Cathedral at Saint John the Divine, Battery Park, NY; Wave Hill, Bronx; as well as at the ExxonMobil Greenpoint Remediation Project, Brooklyn. She has had residencies at Headland Center for the Arts, MacDowell Colony, International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP), New York Hall of Science, and Newtown Creek Alliance. She is the recipient of awards and grants from Anonymous Was a Woman Environmental Art, the Harpo Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, Brooklyn Arts Council, A Blade of Grass, and the Greenpoint Community Environmental Fund. Mun is on the Newtown Creek EPA Superfund Community Advisory Group, a board member at Newtown Creek Alliance, and a honey beekeeper at the Central Park Zoo.
janmun.com