INFO
| Name | Clara Chon (she/her) |
| Also known as | Blue Blank |
| Born | 1986 |
| Country of Birth | South Korea |
| Place of Residence | New York City |
| Ethnicities | Korean |
| Artform | Visual arts, Design, Fashion |
| Decades Active | 2000s, 2010s, 2020s |
ABOUT
Clara Chon is an artist, designer and creator of ‘weird’ slow fashion label Blue Blank, currently based in New York City. Her meticulously crafted clothing and accessories often incorporate 'emotionally loaded materials' such as leather and metal, with direct references to bondage and high fashion. Chon has previously described Blue Blank’s output as 'tangible oxymorons' — her use of soft with hard materials being at once playful and bleakly misanthropic.
Chon’s wearable objects and garments have been exhibited in galleries, featured in fashion magazines and shown at New Zealand Fashion Week. In recent years, she has been the costume designer for Te Moana Meridian (2022), a five-channel video installation by artist Sam Hamilton, and Aging is not a Fairy Tale (2023) a play produced by Theater for the New City, New York.
Upcycling and the creation of one-of-a-kind garments is Chon’s sustainable approach to design. Her output deliberately dodges any divisions between art and fashion, and is instead, as stated in The Vernacularist Wāhine — Women, a development of her “own versions of reality and visual vocabulary”. On her early influences and penchant for DIY, Chon explains that she “grew up in the suburbs and Saturdays were usually filled with hanging out at malls; perhaps my fascination with DIY came as an allergic reaction to an upbringing that was just totally consumerist.”
In 2016, Chon created a custom leather jacket for reality TV star and entrepreneur Kim Kardashian. Known as the ‘meta selfie jacket’, it featured scrupulously painted selfies of Kardashian alongside the words ‘chill’ and ‘slay’ taken from Kim’s KIMOJI app down the arms of the second-hand jacket. At the time, photographs of Kardashian wearing the jacket on numerous occasions circulated social media with Chon’s work receiving widespread attention from the likes of Vogue, and OK! magazines. Kardashian herself described Blue Blank as a “sick bespoke brand in New Zealand.” Chon relates French philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s idea of ‘simulacra and simulation’ or image and imitation, to the Kim Kardashian jacket:
I feel Baudrillard’s concept of hyperreality correlates with the selfie on many grounds—like the online world serving as a somewhat comforting construction of simulated ideals, and the paradox of the selfie as a denial and validation of the self. And who better than the selfie queen to represent this existential plight?
Chon was born in Seoul, South Korea, moving to Tāmaki Makaurau when she was ten years old. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) in 2008 and a Master's of Fine Arts from Elam School of Fine Arts in 2011.
LINKS
Key works / presentations
Costume design:
2023 - Aging is Not A Fairytale, Theater for the New City, New York
2022 - Te Moana Meridian, Sam Hamilton
Exhibitions:
2016 – Overseas BF, Glovebox, Tāmaki Makaurau
2015 – iD2K16, Blue Oyster art project space, Ōtepoti
2013 – A Different View: Artists Address Pornography, with Liyen Chong, curated by Linda Tyler, Gus Fisher Gallery, Tāmaki Makaurau,
2010 – Lethargy Lost with Yi-Zhen Lai-Tremewan, RM gallery + project space, Tāmaki Makaurau
2010 – Sculpture Season, Gallery Three, with Kah Bee Chow, AUT University, Tāmaki Makaurau
2010 – RM Flag Project, RM gallery + project space, Tāmaki Makaurau
2009-2010 – Waterfront Morals/Fatherly Functions, with Florence Wild, Window, Tāmaki Makaurau
2008 – Resort Wear All Year Round, with Charles Ninow, rm103 (RM gallery + project space), Tāmaki Makaurau
