Grace Kwon

Grace Kwon

Cultural Work Manager

she/her

About

Grace Kwon

Grace Kwon is the Cultural Work Manager and a social practice artist who uses ritual, research, and viewer interaction to explore how people are impacted by colonization and how collective healing can be resistance to the status quo. She creates art centered around collaboration, care, and human connections to co-create new worlds that reject old, destructive systems. Grace created Kimchi Leavings for APANO’s 2021 East Portland Art and Literary Festival (EPALF), a collective cleansing ritual calling on native Korean culture (shamanism and kimchi-making) to release the ghosts of dominant culture residing within the body, mind, and spirit of BIPOC folks. She is currently an artist-in-residence for East Portland Art + Justice Lab (EPAJL) where she produces a newspaper with residents of Orchards of 82nd (O82) to connect residents to each other, APANO, and the broader East Portland community. Grace also makes art with a group of BIPOC artists on the O82 Art Crew, creating exhibits about SE 82nd.

Grace was an English and Creative Arts teacher in South Africa from 2017 to 2019. She studied and made art at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South Korea from 2015-2016. She studied Visual Art and Arts Management at the University of Oregon and graduated in 2017.

Grace loves exploring new places, having deep conversations, dancing to live music, and soaking up the sun.