[K-ART] Samantha Yun Wall @Seattle Art Museum

Samantha Yun Wall @Seattle Art Museum

• DATE: Thursday, October 1, 2026 • TIME: 5:30 PM (feel free to come by anytime) • PLACE: Seattle Art Museum • Tickets: Free First Thursday [Free First Thursday: Seattle Art Museum | Seattle Art Museum](https://www.seattleartmuseum.org/whats-on/events/free-first-thursday-seattle-art-museum-oct-1-26)

5-8 pm \| Drop-in art activity: Community altar with [A Resting Place](https://sites.google.com/view/arestingplace/home) Brotman Forum *[Samantha Yun Wall: What We Leave Behind](https://www.seattleartmuseum.org/whats-on/exhibitions/samantha-yun-wall-2024-betty-bowen-award-winner)* invites us to reflect on loss in all its forms. Respond to writing prompts that encourage connection and healing, and contribute to our community altar. A Resting Place (ARP) is a grief & loss cultural resource center located in Seattle’s Chinatown International District.

6-7:30 pm \| Performance by [Seattle Women's Jazz Orchestra](https://swojo.org/) 4th Floor Galleries The Seattle Women’s Jazz Orchestra (SWOJO) performs jazz standards, Latin and Brazilian jazz, and has been showcasing many of the finest female jazz artists in the region since 2000.

[Samantha Yun Wall | Seattle Art Museum](https://www.seattleartmuseum.org/whats-on/exhibitions/samantha-yun-wall-2024-betty-bowen-award-winner) 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](https://www.seattleartmuseum.org/whats-on/programs/the-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.