[original_bio_short]
Sarah Hwang loves/hates contemporary art and visual culture. She considers herself a soul train conductor and/or cat wrangler who is skilled at mediating creative projects into fruition. She has a particular interest in experimental publishing, a concept she came up with to describe publishing as a potential strategy of curation and collaboration. If you have a weird, compelling, idiosyncratic idea you want to publish as a zine, online publication or [multi]media, she is down. Sarah is a West Coast native.
[academic_bio_long]
Sarah Hwang is a PhD candidate at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. Her dissertation research is a critical history of street art's intersection with the internet. It traces street art's trajectory from the material to the digital by examining early mediations of graffiti and its early intersection with the internet, focusing on street artists who engage with expanded internet practices and digital technology in their work, and considering the internet's "genre-effect" standardizing visual culture online as well as street art's convergence with the contemporary art world. It also questions whether street art upholds its site-specificity when re-placed in digital space and challenges the notion of subcultures as resistant to mainstream/popular culture.
She is also co-founder and co-managing editor of DiSCo Journal, an experimental online journal of digital arts, culture and methods. The journal extends from her ongoing practice in experimental publishing, a concept that was first formalized by her art publishing residency at Art Practical + Daily Serving.
Sarah received her MA art history from the University of Oregon where she was awarded a two-year Graduate Teaching Fellowship. Her MA thesis titled Between Outdoor and Indoor: The Graffiti and Installations of Barry McGee (TWIST) was partially funded by a A&AA/PODS Student Grant. She received her BA art history from Boston University.