Sum (숨) Workshop with Jun Yang

Sum (숨) is a hands-on textile workshop led by multidisciplinary artist Jun Yang. Participants will create soft sculptures and mini pillow-like forms through simple sewing and stuffing techniques, exploring how fabric, touch, and form can carry memory and emotion. Inspired by experiences of loss and loneliness, as well as a desire to honor family legacies and preserve personal histories, this workshop approaches art-making as a therapeutic act of creating. Participants are invited to explore softness as a form of resilience while crafting tactile objects that hold memories, care, and belonging. The focus is not on producing visually perfect objects, but on the act of making itself—an intimate process of reflection, healing, and connection. Through slow, hands-on creation, the workshop becomes a space for collective care, where creativity transforms into a quiet revolution of healing and shared joy.  SUM (숨) (means breathing in Korean) This program is co-sponsored with Ma’s House.

Artist Bio

"Jun Yang (he/they) is a queer Korean multidisciplinary artist based in San Francisco. Born in Seoul, Yang’s migration across Europe to the Bay Area was shaped by social isolation and a search for safety. He developed a self-directed practice rooted in grief, healing, survival, psychological transformation, and rewriting personal history through two-dimensional paintings and tactile textile sculptures.

Working across painting, murals, ceramics, and textile sculpture, Yang depicts gender-diverse queer bodies resting and healing unapologetically within natural landscapes. His interactive soft sculptures are meant to be held and touched, composed of exaggerated, interlocking limbs that embody both emotional weight and the feeling of not belonging. Through this work, Yang challenges traditional beauty standards and creates space for collective healing experiences.

Yang has been nominated for the SECA Art Award (SFMOMA) and the Fleishhacker Foundation Eureka Fellowship, and is a two-time recipient of the San Francisco Arts Commission Visual Arts Grants (2023, 2025). His exhibitions include a first museum solo exhibition at the Bakersfield Museum of Art and group exhibitions at the Asian Art Museum, de Young Museum, MarinMOCA, among others."