Samantha Yun Wall: What We Leave Behind
Thursday, February 5, 2026
Samantha Yun Wall’s new paintings use overlapping silhouettes of female figures as portals to unknown spaces and different temporal realms. Impetus for the new body of work is a Korean folk tale in which the Pasque flower is symbolic of a grandmother who passed away without the loving care of her grandchildren. It is a story of melancholy, loss, and remembrance. The delicate hair on the flower’s stem differentiates it, and the artist gives the plant a surreal aspect in some of her paintings, replacing the flower’s center with a watchful eye.
Yun Wall has long been interested in the personal narratives of people born to Asian women and US service members during times of military occupation in Asia. The artist is mindful of the fact that these Amerasian children are stigmatized and Black Amerasians even more so. Examining cultural taboos that perpetuate secrecy and silence, she presents her figures alternately as invisible and hypervisible in stark black and white.
In past work, Yun Wall drew on ghosts, monsters, healers, and storytellers—from Korean folklore as well as science fiction—to deconstruct and reframe the stories of outcasts in dynamic compositions. While her interest in these figures continues, her new paintings and drawings have a probing and introspective quality. Wall’s silhouettes puncture time and space, allude to past and present, and point to what remains unsaid or unknown.
Samantha Yun Wall (b. 1977, Seoul) is the 2024 Betty Bowen Award winner. Established in 1977 to honor the legacy of Betty Bowen—an enthusiastic supporter of Northwest contemporary art—the annual award celebrates a Northwest artist for their original, exceptional, and compelling work.
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