Opens July 1, 2026
Jisoo Chung, Miss Kim Lilac at HARDWARE
Still from Jisoo Chung, Miss Kim Lilac, 2023–24, 18 minute 50 second 4K single-channel video. Courtesy of the artist.
About
Narrated from the point of view of a plant, Jisoo Chung’s experimental documentary traces the story of a lilac tree. Officially called ‘Miss Kim’ this lilac was brought to the United States from its native South Korea by an American botanist in the 1940s. Questioning the relationship between name and object—a reoccurring theme across Chung’s work—the artist travels to New England in search of the original lilac specimen, and in the end finds much more.
Jisoo Chung, Miss Kim Lilac, 2023–24, 18 minute 50 second 4K single-channel video with sound played on loop. Directed, written, filmed, edited, and translated by Jisoo Chung. Music composer is Dylan Marx. Sound Mix by Myung Soo Kay. Colorist is The Collective Studio. Supported by Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture, The Puffin Foundation, and International Lilac Society.
Jisoo Chung: Miss Kim Lilac at HARDWARE is curated by Lighthouse Works Curator-at-Large Laurel Ptak, with the support of Community Coordinator, Claudia DeSimone and Fellowship Director, Eliza Schmidt. Exhibition guide designed by Eric Nylund. Special thanks to the entire team at Island Hardware for their ongoing support.
HARDWARE is a year-round exhibition space for film and video by contemporary artists located in the loose screw section of Island Hardware on Fishers Island. Every two months, a new moving-image work by a former Lighthouse Works Fellow appears, inviting unexpected encounters with contemporary art where the everyday rhythms, textures, and temporalities of a hardware shop frame the work. Conceived by master carpenter Dave Beckwith and curator Laurel Ptak, HARDWARE grew out of an earlier collaboration as part of the exhibition Sara Magenheimer: Ill-Gotten Gains.
Located inside Island Hardware at 741 The Gloaming on Fishers Island, HARDWARE is programmed by Lighthouse Works and open to the public during business hours, from Monday–Friday 8am–4pm and Sunday 8am–noon, or by appointment. For further information about the exhibition contact Nate Malinowski at [email protected] or (631) 788-7713.
Artist
Bio
Jisoo Chung is a multimedia artist using video, installation, drawings, and performance. As a Korean artist who relocated to the United States, she traces failures in language, such as mistranslations, auto-corrections, and omissions, to track the sociocultural power constructed in language and names. A search for the loss of identity evoked by linguistic failures is where her works begin. Chung is a nominee for a United States Artist Fellowship, a fellow of MacDowell Residency, and a grant recipient of the LACE Lightning Fund (Andy Warhol Foundation), Puffin Foundation New Jersey, and Seoul Arts and Cultural Council. Her recent film Miss Kim Lilac (2023–24) won the Jungwoon Prize from the Seoul International Experimental Film and Video Festival. Her works have been presented internationally, including Ji.Hlava International Film Festival, Czech Republic; BOAN1942, Seoul; Matsutake Gallery, Paris; Studio For Artistic Research, Düsseldorf; Fellows of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, among others. Chung holds an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a BFA from Seoul National University. She is a co-founder of an artist-run art educational studio, Drawwing Cabinet, an advisory board member of a nonprofit organization, Prospect Art, and is currently an adjunct faculty member at Bakersfield College.