Samantha Wall

Artist Biography

Samantha Wall (b. 1977, South Korea) immigrated to the United States as a child, and currently lives and works in Portland, OR. She received her BFA in 2001 from The University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, and her MFA in 2011 from Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland, OR.

Wall has exhibited her work regionally and nationally throughout the state of Oregon, Seattle, WA, New Orleans, LA, Columbia, SC, New York, NY, Peekskill, NY, Vancouver, WA, Charleston, WV, Frankfurt, Germany, Sienna, Italy, King School of Contemporary Art, Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Museum of Northwest Art, Schneider Museum of Art, Portland Art Museum, and the New Orleans Museum of Art. She is the recipient of multiple awards and artist residencies including Artist in Residence at Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts, Pendleton, OR, Artist in Residence at Joan Mitchell Center, New Orleans, LA, Arlene Schnitzer Prize – Contemporary Northwest Art Awards, Portland Art Museum, Career Opportunity Grant and Ford Family Foundation Grant, Oregon Arts Commission, Salem, Purchase Award – Portable Works Collection, Regional Arts & Culture Council, Portland, OR, Purchase award -Visual Chronicle of Portland, OR, and The Drawing Center, New York, NY to name a few. Her work has also been published in Oregon ArtsWatch, Artslandia, The Seattle Times, Crosscut, Preview, Portland Art Museum, Willamette Week, The Portland Mercury, We-Heart, Hi-Fructose, OPB, Vox Life, Huffington Post, Colorlines, Beautiful/Decay, Juxtapoz, Art Ltd, The Corvallis Advocate, The Oregonian, PORT, and Tri-City Voice. Wall’s artwork can be found in public and private collections globally including Northern Arizona University Art Museum, Multnomah County – Regional Arts & Culture Council, Portland Art Museum, Portland Community College, and the Visual Chronicle – Regional Arts & Culture Council.

Artist Statement

“My recent drawings are an exploration into family identity, cultural history, and loss. Living most of my life in the U.S., I’ve always felt a distance and the inability to locate myself within Korean culture. Being multiracial, my body and facial features also limited my access to that history and its people. As a result, I looked further in Korea’s past until I found a point of entry that resonated with me. Korea’s indigenous religious practice, Muism, and the women who are its primary practitioners revealed a space where I could place myself within a continuum. From this vantage point, I’ve gained insight to a longer matrilineal narrative and its accompanying mythologies. Working from photographs that I take of myself and the women in my family, I’ve created portraits that interweave fragments of an alternative world built from those mythologies and personal history. The bodies in my drawings become bridges to a past that would otherwise be inaccessible.”

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