Pair of Cups, 2026

Soojin Choi

Porcelain

4.25 & 4.75 in x 3.75 D

Soojin Choi's work explores the remarkable ability of the human face to communicate emotion, identity, and experience. By returning to the form again and again, she reveals an almost endless range of expression-each face distinct despite emerging from a repeated process.

During her Residency at The Clay Studio, Choi has deepened the relationship between her painting and ceramic practices, expanding her technical command of glaze. While earlier works relied primarily on underglaze painting to articulate the surfaces of her sculptural forms, she now embraces glaze as an integral part of her visual language, using its depth, color, and material qualities to enrich each piece.

The result is a compelling convergence of painting, sculpture, and ceramics, demonstrating Choi's evolving mastery of the medium and her ongoing fascination with the complexity of human expression.

Artist Statement

Human emotion comes from the interplay between people, physical space, and emotion itself. The ambivalence of human emotion occurs through unresolved and confusing situations in external and internal matters. An ambivalent moment reveals itself to me, and I depict that gray area of humanity. I recount these unsettled situations so viewers can empathetically encounter the emotions of the human forms I create. In making my work, I attempt to express the ambiguity of emotion through flat and spatial surfaces; subtle facial expression, gaze and body gesture; as well as color and brush expressions. Building the surfaces with clay allows me to seamlessly weave between dimensions and textures to articulate feelings of ambivalence.

Artist Biography

Soojin Choi (b.1991) was born and raised in South Korea, and she has worked as an artist in the United States since 2010. Soojin earned her BFA at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2015 with a double major in Craft/ Material Studies and Painting/ Printmaking. She continued her studies at Alfred University to pursue a MFA degree in ceramics in 2018.

After graduate school, she was a resident at the Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis, MN with funding by Anonymous Artist Studio Fellowship, a long-term resident artist at Red Lodge Clay Center in Red Lodge, MT, she is a long-term resident artist at Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, MT. Her work transforms objects, figures and spaces into visual language by repeatedly layering flat and spatial surfaces.

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