Young-jun Tak

In sculptures, films, and performances, multimedia artist Young-jun Tak builds unusual channels of communication between radical Christian organizations and queer communities. Tak exposes affinities between these groups, which in the context of global media discourse are perennially in conflict. Appropriating Christian religious iconographies and anti-LGBTQi printed materials, Tak redeploys them together to amplify the dissonances between the devotional imagery and the organizations’ base messaging and actions. At the same time, Tak examines the sacrifices members of both groups make in the service of community, submitting themselves to particular codes and behavioral parameters in order to be welcomed into the spaces of performative worldmaking — churches and clubs — that are central to their expressions of earthly belonging.