Mo Kwok

b. 1993, Hong Kong.

Mo graduated from University of Chicago with honors majoring in Political Science and minoring in Visual Arts. She holds a Master of Education from Harvard University. Mo studied under world renown artist Theaster Gates, celebrated photographer Richard Rinaldi and Award-winning director Guy Maddin. Her love for painting started at an early age. As soon as she was old enough to travel alone, she attended a painting residency in Tuscany with the Maryland Institute of Art. When the opportunity of having a solo show came, she dropped out of law school to focus on preparing for the exhibition. Initially, Mo became an artist because creating is her love language. From kindergarten days of making pasta picture frames on Mother’s Day, to throwing porcelain tableware for her friend’s wedding, Mo rearranging existing particles to show care to those around her. It was not until college, when she worked with Theaster Gates, witnessing and participating in the development of the Dorchester Project and Stony Island Arts Bank, that Mo pivots to the role of the artist as an activist and changemaker.

Throughout her early years she focused on everything but painting, from large scale installations that decries income inequality and cultural imperialism to short films about the problematic language and discourse surrounding people with albinism, Mo did not paint. She was concerned with the limitations of a single image, the lack of interaction and relevance. Until one day, she taught a class at the Harvard Art Museum on Josef Albers’ Interaction of Colors, which took place in the corner between one of Albers’ Homage to Square paintings and Morris Louis’ Blue Veil. She was convinced that painting, too, can be revolutionary. And from that day on, Mo became wildly curious about color theory and began her unending journey in experimenting with stain painting, diluting oil paint with turpentine and pouring it on raw canvas, as well as encaustic painting, mixing damar resin, bee’s wax and pigment and painting with a blowtorch and steam iron. Her YouTube watch history is filled with videos of Zhang Daqian ink painting demonstrations and interviews with Helen Frankenthaler. It was in this chaotic symphony of research and frenzied experimentation, that the following series Too Many Feelings, Windows of My Soul and Sensory Poetry amongst others were born.