Korean-American artist MINA CHEON (PhD, MFA) is a new media artist, scholar, and educator. She divides her time between United States and South Korea, residing in Baltimore, New York and Seoul. Cheon is a full-time professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and teaches courses between fine art studio, new media, and liberal arts. In 2010, Cheon was awarded The MICA MLK Unity Week award for her efforts on cultural diversity within and beyond the MICA community. Cheon’s most important educational contribution has been her international work. She founded and directed the intercultural and interdisciplinary summer study abroad program known as MICA KOREA that ran from 2004 to 2007 in Seoul and worked with various Korean colleges such as Hong-ik University and the Korean National University of Arts. With the collaboration of architect Gabriel Kroiz, who is currently the program director of UG Architecture program at Morgan State University (MSU), the CHEON KROIZ team devoted their summers to international exchange projects with students, faculty, and artists from both the United States and South Korea. The summer 2010 international collaboration was held at Ewha Woman’s University, Seoul, where students from MICA, MSU, and Ewha joined in on collective public projects that culminated into a book COMBAT: SPORTS + MILITARY published by Culture Bank Publishing Co., 2010. This book documented art activism that took place all around Seoul and the many projects that responded to the social and political climate of S. Korea and in relation to the world at that time. As an artist, Cheon has exhibited her artwork nationally and internationally. She makes artwork that range from interactive media, video, installation, and performance and merges her artistic practice with theoretical interests. She defines her recent body of work as POLITICAL POP ART which is highlighted in her 2012 mid-career solo exhibition POLIPOP at the Sungkok Art Museum in Seoul, Korea. Political Pop Art deals with issues of global politics and popular media culture. Cheon makes artwork that looks at the triangular relationship between South Korea, North Korea, and the United States, as well as extended cultural comparatives such as between neighboring Asian nations such as Korea, Japan, and China. Her last solo exhibition ADDRESSING DOLLS was at the C.Grimaldis Gallery in Baltimore in 2008 and was awarded the 2008 Best Solo Exhibition by the City Paper. The exhibition revealed the geo-political complications between South and North Korea through girls’ play things such as dolls and paper doll dresses. The exhibition was featured and reviewed in Voices of America, The Sun Paper, Artist Organized Arts, The City Paper, Radar Redux, Urbanite, WYPR, 88.1 Radio, NPR News Station. Her other past invitational solo exhibitions include DIZZ/PLACEMENT at the Insa Art Space, Arts Council, Seoul, Korea in 2005 which included her work first political pop art HALF MOON EYES and in 2002, Cheon had her first solo exhibition in New York at the Lance Fung Gallery entitled GROUNDLESS which she got reviews from The NY Times and The Village Voice. Cheon’s participation to group exhibitions include showing at the Korus House, Korean Embassy in D.C. as well as an ongoing exhibition at the American Ambassador Kathleen Stephens’ home in Seoul, Korea; “Athena’s Daughters,” curated by Grace Hartigan, at the Maryland Art Place in 2004; International Women’s Arts Festival in Taiwan, exhibition at the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts in 2003; group exhibition “PIX” at Lance Fung and Emily Harvey Gallery in 2002; and “The Flow of New Tendencies in Korean Art” at the Korean Cultural Arts Foundation in 2000. Her video art works have recently been collected at the Smithsonian Art Collection in D.C. as well as collected and archived by EVR (e-flux video rental), a project that collects, archives, and screens video artworks selected by curators of New York, Miami, Frankfurt, Berlin, Amsterdam, Vienna, and Seoul, Korea. As a writer and scholar, Cheon’s latest book SHAMANISM + CYBERSPACE (2009, Atropos Press, NY and Dresden) deals with the complex issues of magic and media in today’s cyber culture and is written in a postcolonial, performance, and gender studies perspectives. It is reviewed in the WolganMisool Arts Monthly of Seoul, and also by Lisa Paul Streitfeld (art critic of The Huffington Post) in the Issue #30 of ArtUS. This theoretical book of 370 pages was adapted from her dissertation “The Shæman in Cyberspace: Dilemmas of Reproduction” (2008), which was completed for her doctoral degree in Philosophy of Media and Communications at the European Graduate School (EGS), Switzerland. Cheon has also written about art, culture, and technology for ArtUS magazine (LA, CA), Ctrl+P: Critical Arts Journal (Manila, Philippines), “SCI-ART” article series for the NY Arts Magazine (2002-2004), and Wolgan Misool. She was guest editor for Media-N, New Media Caucus, CAA, and for the Gwangju Biennale Catalog 2006. Cheon is also a correspondent and chair of diversity council for ARTIST ORGANIZED ART a non-profit group that showcases and publishes about art events around the world organized by artists. Cheon also served the Board of Directors of the Critical Arts Journal LINK between 2002-2005. Cheon has also participated and presented in numerous academic panels and symposiums and extended her public speaking in various forums. Upcoming are her participations to Leslie King Hammond’s diversity panel at 2011 College Arts Association (CAA) in NY and co-chairing a panel with Lisa Paul Streitfeld MAGIC + MEDIA sponsored by New Media Caucus (NMC), 2012 CAA in LA. Recently, she participated in the Think Tank Conference at MICA; THE SHAMAN panel with John Peacock, moderated by King Hammond; and gave a reading of her book “Shamanism + Cyberspace” at the HP Garcia Gallery in New York. Cheon was panelist for The 2010 MLK Special on The Marc Steiner Show, radio talk show as well as other distinguished panels such as the Cyber-feminism panel at the International Symposium of Electronic Art 2008; International Partnership panel of the National Council of Art Administrators 2008; and the Women’s Caucus for Art panel and the Art of Being Global panel at CAA NY 2007. Co-sponsored by the Maryland Institute College of Art and the 6th Gwangju Biennale 2006, Cheon also chaired the NMC panel at ARTspace ASIA EFFECTS IN NEW MEDIA at CAA Boston 2006. Other panel participation includes: International Symposium of Association of International Art Schools (AIAS) Conference 2005 and panelist for “2003 Technology: Resource for Change" of the National Endowment of Arts. Cheon’s larger art projects include organizing SCI-ART exhibition at Maryland Art Place in 2000 with educational program at Park School, funded by Maryland Arts Council, and her past history of assisting projects such as Nam June Paik’s infoART pavilion in Gwangju Biennale 1996 and the Seoul Fluxus Festival in 1993. In the past, Cheon worked commercially, working on branding and directing fashion shows and art events for a large fashion company SSamzie Co., a company that patrons contemporary Korean artists and one that sponsored some of Cheon’s artistic projects. Cheon earned her PhD degree in philosophy of media and communications at the European Graduate School (EGS) of European University for Interdisciplinary Studies (EUFIS), Saas-Fee, Wallis, Switzerland in 2008. Prior to EGS, Cheon was a Maryland Institute of Technology in the Humanities (MITH) Doctoral Fellow at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she first started her Ph.D. work in the Theatre History and Performance Studies department. Cheon also has two MFAs; one from the Hoffberger School of Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art (1999) and another from the Imaging Digital Arts (IMDA) program of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County: An Honors University of Arts, Science, and Technology (2002). Cheon's BFA was in Painting from the Ewha Woman’s University of Seoul, Korea (1996) where she was invited as visiting professor during fall 2011. Mina Cheon is also known by her past artist name MINALIZA1000 or by her pen name M-1000 and in Korea, by her Korean name 천민정. Email: minacheon@gmail.com and picture of the artist. All rights reserved. Copyright © by Mina Cheon 2012.