Naoko Wowsugi

Naoco Wowsugi  is a Korean-Japanese artist who lives in Washington D.C., United States. Wowsugi won an award from the Smithsonian Museum, the National Portrait Gallery’s 2016 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. Much of her art is made by many people working together. She is a professor at American University.Jenkins, M. (2015). In the galleries: At hamiltonian, a birthday celebration of a different sort. The Washington Post. Retrieved from ProQuest. In 2023, Wowsugi changed the spelling of her first name from "Naoko" to "Naoco" to endorse U.S. representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 

 Early life and education 
Wowsugi was born and raised in Japan.  She is of South Korean descent. When she was small, she dealt with social alienation, caused by being mixed-race Korean and Japanese.  Wowsugi studied in the Osaka University of Arts while she was in Japan.  She later moved to the United States. She graduated from the Kansas Art Institute. She graduated with a BFA from both schools. “As an artist, I emigrated from another country to America,” says Wowsugi. “Art making always connects people and I learn about the community." She then started expressing "contemporary social community" through art at Rockville, a city near Washington DC. Wowsugi got her Master of Fine Arts from Virginia Commonwealth University.

 Career 
Wowsugi brings people together with collective hands on art projects that give back to their community. 

Wowsugi moved to Minneapolis, MN, USA.Kaufmann, G. (2005, Aug 18). Tails of the city; naoko wowsugi ponies up some head sculptures. PitchWeekly Retrieved from ProQuest. She began doing haircuts as performance art. She used the cut hair in her A Hairy Tale exjhibit.Braverman, R., Fischer, A., & Kaufmann, G. (2005, Mar 10). Art capsule reviews; our critics recommend these shows. PitchWeekly Retrieved from ProQuest.

She started creating community projects In 2019 in Charleston, she started a Community project called the Fungus among us.  Inspired by the mycelium network, more than 200 community members, toddlers to elders, collaborated together to create a mushroom parade in the neighborhood. The goal of this project was to show how fungi/mushrooms are so closely connected, similar to a strong community.  Apart from this, her second project was called MICROCOSMOS. It was a planetarium about mushrooms. It was open for 10 days, and more than 2,000 people attended.  Wowsugi is giving her community what she didn’t have as a child. Her goal is to make sure no one feels left out, no matter their age, gender or race.

She was a professor at  Virginia Commonwealth University. She now teaches at American University.

Wowsugi won theThe Outwin portrait award in 2016.  Her work, "Thank Your for Teaching Me English," is many portraits of people who taught her a word in English. She painted their picture and recorded them saying the word.  2016: American Portraiture Today (Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery)

Wowsugi was an Artist-in-Residence at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation in 2017.

References

Category:Japanese artists
Category:Living people
Category:Year of birth missing (living people)