[Exhibition text by Jiwon Geum]

Mooa Kang once dreamed of a three-legged table—borne by a female waist with crossed legs, somewhere between humankind and fauna. It was feminine, sensual, and effortlessly chic all at once. Astounded by its poise and finesse, Mooa made a drawing upon waking up. Borrowing the title from this drawing, Table of Thoughts references a moment of stepping into an artist’s studio. Here, visitors are not merely viewers but are invited as active participants, collaborators, and even protagonists in an intimate setting.

Showcasing Mooa’s works across various mediums including drawing, painting, textiles, sculpture, and furniture, the exhibition invites multisensory engagement by touch. Her works blend artistic categories—take the Body Tables (2017-2024), Mooa’s signature ‘Furni-sculptures,’ which artfully amalgamate furniture and sculpture in multicolored painterly surfaces. On top of them lie silk scarves from the Camouflage Pattern series (2015). Constituted with digital replications of her hand drawings, the Mandala-like patterns transform fragmented parts of the female body from her drawings into visual language of ornamentation, disguising subversive themes of womanhood into abstraction.

In Mooa’s words, color is “a vital link, bridging nature and the human body.” She applies pigments along the natural wood grains through minimal intervention, each grain and color reflecting human individuity and diversity as an act of repair and rejuvenation. Connected through multiple hinges, their appearances are changeable, like how nature’s color turns and humans undressing one’s fleeting moods.

Utilizing dreams and visceral sketches as reservoirs for reflection, the exhibition integrates Mooa’s exploration of art, craft, space, and design, inviting visitors to reflect on their own transformative journeys.

Table of Thoughts marks Mooa’s third solo exhibition and her first in Seattle. Curated by Jiwon Geum, independent curator, in close dialogue with the artist.

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Jiwon Geum (b. 1992, Seoul) is an independent curator, writer, and researcher based in New York. She holds an MA in Curatorial Studies from Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies, where she curated Right to Mother (2023). During her time at CCS Bard, she was a Curatorial Fellow at The Drawing Center (2022) and contributed to developing the show Xiyadie: Queer Cut Utopias (2023). Previously, she contributed to exhibitions at YveYANG Gallery (2023-24), ARKO Art Center (2020), and the Total Museum of Contemporary Art (2019) in Seoul, South Korea. She earned her bachelor’s in Painting and Art History at Ewha Womans University and is currently co-directing a curatorial group called Stealing fictions with Yoojin Jang and Junyoung Lee.