Currently On View | Upcoming Soon:

June 8, 2025 - Los Angeles, CA

Hwa Records x GYOPO Diasporic Refractions, part of Seoul Festival, Walt Disney Concert Hall - Blue Ribbon Garden, Los Angeles, CA

July 26, 2025 - San Diego, CA

the land we carry (debut of new film & multi-media alter installation), curated by hamsa fae, Viet Voices, San Diego, CA

August 30, 2025 - Pittsburgh, PA

Futurity of the Womb: The Myth of the Cyborg Kisaeng in collaboration w/ Kayla Tange and Mudang Jenn Kim, Alloy Studios - Kelly Strayhorn Theater

c.ryu.portal@gmail.com

About

C. is pronounced See | Sea | 시.

C. Ryu is an interdisciplinary artist who also responds to the titles of modern day myth maker, bad historian, spiral storyteller, and avid ghosts believer.

Ryu uses translation as a tool to map forgotten histories – to reveal psychological shadows haunting | hunting the Korean diaspora – and performs contemporary translations of rituals for the living. Tracing the edges of hidden and silenced perspectives of the past to inform the personal and political of the present, she visualizes narratives activating multiple voices in tension with each other to highlight the complicated structures of power while unraveling imperial illusions through geopolitical poetry.

A modern day myth maker, often conflating documentary and science fiction to showcase the warped nature of emotional time in migration storytelling, Ryu collaborates with complex historical narratives, questioning who is allowed to be recorded in archives. Her practice is rooted in performance, lens-based installations, experimental capture, and social practice—utilizing translation as a glitch to remind how much the past has hidden multiplicity, the strange, or the ugly to fit nation-state desires. By re-translating oral histories and re-framing ancient mythologies and demonologies, Ryu alchemizes the shame that haunts immigrant communities to realize how phantoms are human-made.

Humans made machines,

humans made history,

humans have made ghosts,

and if terror is manufactured,

it can also be transmuted.

Her work, in a sense, is “ghost hunting”—seeking the forgotten, erased, or overlooked individuals whose stories were often the most radical. She’s looking for those who were too loud to be categorized within history.

C. Ryu is a co-founder of Hwa Records, JADED (named 2022 People of the Year by the Pittsburgh City Paper), and Han Diaspora Group. These artist collectives focus on different aspects of the Asian diaspora experience. Searching for radical existence, Ryu especially places importance on envisioning safe spaces and alternative learning models that allows her communities to dream wild, process unheard traumas, or plant grounds for new futures.

Ryu has performed, exhibited, and culturally produced at Carnegie Museum of Art; Institute of Contemporary Art, San Francisco; LAPhil Insight; McDonough Museum of Art; University of Southern California; LA Art Show; Kelly Strayhorn Theater; and more.

Ryu graduated Carnegie Mellon University with a MFA in Art and Washington University in St. Louis with a BFA in Studio Art. They have taught as an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University and Carlow University instructing courses such as Digitally Mediated Performance, Digital Photography, Introduction to Digital Art & Media, and Introduction to New Media. She is currently based in Southern California and is in the midst of producing their next performance spectacle reimagining forgotten Korean goddess mythology and demonology that will debut in Pittsburgh, PA - August 30, 2025.