Nina Sun is currently in pursuit of her BA in Visual Critical Studies at the Art Institute of Chicago. Her expected graduation date is May 2026.

Artist’s Statement

My work explores vulnerability—both emotional and physical—through the mediation of a metaphoric veil. Meaning, derived from personal experience, is both obscured and heightened through an evolving system of symbolic imagery, oscillating between the idiosyncratic and the universal, the poetic and the paradoxically practical. Translucency—both material and metaphorical—acts as a lens through which I navigate depth, perception, and the instability of meaning.

At the core of my practice is the synthesis of binaries: obscurity and clarity, vulnerability and brutality, tension and harmony, artifice and sincerity. Melodrama appears as both form and method, using extravagant theatricality, emotional saturation, and heightened spectacle to condense reality into distilled fictions. Simple plots and clear morals emerge, only to blur into excess and ambiguity.

Through these gestures, my work constructs utopian fantasies and social spaces of desire—realms where rupture and conciliation coexist. Sensationalization and cathartic resolution offer moments of unequivocal pleasure, yet always remain in tension with the complexities of perception and truth. My practice operates within this dynamic space, where meaning is constantly shifting, and the boundary between reality and performance is in perpetual negotiation.

Exhibitions

2024, Group Exhibitions

SAIC Artbash, SAIC Galleries, Chicago, IL

AND NOW, Agitator Gallery, Chicago, IL

Neither Here Nor There, Side Street Studio Arts, Elgin, IL