We hate our jobs. The current San Francisco job market paints a depressing landscape: from the economic slog rippling out from the tech sector to the mundane evil of bad bosses. In the fog of late-stage capitalism, finding work that is creatively fulfilling (and financially sustaining) seems increasingly impossible.
Yet, San Francisco-based artist Kacy Jung spins professional nihilism into artistic inspiration. Biomedical Ph.D. student turned full-time artist, Jung proves that you should quit your day job.
Spurred from her own struggles—changing careers, pursuing the arts, working as an immigrant woman—Jung creates work about the commodification of workers. In The Weight of Souls, Grocery Bags series, close-up portraits of fellow career-changed artists are imposed onto tote bags. The belly of the bags distend each face—disembodied, deformed, and objectified. Throughout the many iterations of the series, she gives form to the erasure and persistence of selfhood. Jung extends this metaphor to herself through her Self-Portrait series. Her plaster-casted hands crumple, pull taut, and wring glistening tears out from her ghostly face, displaying the pressures she places on herself to assimilate into an imperfect system.
Her works speak to and resonate with a generation of dejected Bay Area artists trying to find their space in an overly-competitive market. Yet, her emerging career points to a hopeful future where artists can find inspiration, success, and liberation through artistic expression.