Diana Un-Jin Cho is a fibre artist. She received a BFA with distinction from the Alberta College of Art and Design in 2007. Spending her childhood in Korea then immigrating to Canada, her art is an attempted reconciliation of two dramatically different aesthetic traditions. Her recent artwork presents rhythmic juxtapositions of hues and lines inspired by the fourteenth century Chogakbo quilting in Korea. She enjoys working intuitively with both new and recycled materials to create sometimes harmonious, sometimes disjointed assemblage of emotive forms and colours to evoke the varied experiences of her life. She currently lives and works in Calgary, AB, Canada.

Current Series

I am currently creating a series of paper collages and embroideries inspired by chogakbo (jogakbo) designs. Chogakbo (jogakbo) is a form of Korean patchwork originating from the 14th century when Korean women used up their scraps of silk, cotton, ramie, or linen from making hanbok (Korean traditional clothing) to make blankets, covers and bojagi (multipurpose square cloth). My paper collage series involve experimenting with brightly colored handmade mulberry papers from Korea. In my recent pieces I have also incorporated white mulberry papers with Hangul (native alphabet of the Korean language) printed on it to further emphasize the beauty of the Korean heritage and language. Not unlike the paper collage series, my embroidery pieces are a reflection of Chogakbo designs but utilizing brightly colored cotton and silk threads on white tarletan and needlepoint canvas. For each work, I am focusing on creating an abstract image with simple geometric patterns and lines. When creating the series my goal is a twofold; one, to produce harmonic rhythm and visual simplicity reminiscent of ancient Korean chogakbo (jogakbo) designs and two, to create pieces that will enrich and stimulate the senses and suggest many possible meanings.