Sung, Jia

born 1992 Minnesota USA

lives in Brooklyn New York USA

Jia Sung is a Singaporean Chinese artist and educator whose practice centers marginalized stories through a syncretic, narrative-driven approach shaped by her immigrant experience. Working across artist books, printmaking, painting, translation, textiles, murals, and teaching, she reinterprets shared archives of mythology and family history through a personal, contemporary lens. Drawing on motifs from Chinese mythology and Buddhist iconography, she uses the familiar visual language of folklore to examine and subvert conventional archetypes of femininity, queerness, and otherness.

Her work has been exhibited at institutions including Wave Hill, the Hessel Museum, and Harper’s Books, internationally across Europe, Asia, and Australia, appeared in publications including The Paris Review, The New Yorker, and the Poetry Foundation, and the special collections of the Met Museum, SFMOMA, Yale, RISD, and SAIC. She published Trickster’s Journey, a Chinese mythological tarot deck and guidebook, with Running Press in 2023.

Her works are in the collections of museums across the US, including Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Asia Art Archive in America, New York; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; Modern Art Museum in San Francisco; Rhode Island School of Design; Yale University and University of Pennsylvania, to name a few.

BIOGRAPHY

1992 Born in Minnesota, USA

2015 BFA painting, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island, USA

2017 Teaching Artist in Residence, Museum of Chinese in America, USA

2017-2018 Teaching Artist, Children’s Museum of the Arts, USA

2019 Visiting Lecturer, School of Visual Arts, USA

2019-2020 Teaching Artist in Residence, Hudson River Museum, USA

2019-2021 CreateNow Teaching Artist, Asian American Writers Workshop, USA

2019-2022 Guest Critic for BFA Seniors Final Reviews, New York University, New York, USA

2020- Adjunct Professor, Rhode Island School of Design, USA
Present Lives and works in Brooklyn, USA

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2025

Winged Seeds, Think!Chinatown, New York, USA

2024

The Tree of Heaven Falls, Island Gallery, New York, USA
astigmysticism, Island Gallery, New York, USA

2019

CHAOS/WHIMS/LUST, Knockdown Center, Maspeth, New York, USA
Folkloric Taxonomy, Wave Hill, Bronx, New York, USA

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2026

45th Anniversary: Home and Abroad, Alisan Fine Arts, New York, USA
Soft Storage, Gaa Gallery, Cologne, Germany
Dallas Art Fair, Alisan Fine Arts New York, Dallas, Texas, USA

2025

Hybrid Nature, Alisan Fine Arts, New York, USA

2023

Gathering, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Brooklyn, New York, David Zwirner Platform, USA
Collectors’ Night 2023 Benefit Auction, Washington Project for the Arts, Washington DC, USA
Benefit Exhibition, Smack Mellon Gallery, Brooklyn, New York, USA
Two Years and Change, Olympia Gallery, Manhattan, New York, USA
The Ripening, Pen and Brush, Manhattan, New York, USA
Carrying the Effigy, Candice Madey, Manhattan, New York, USA
S.E.A. Focus Presentation, Island Gallery, Singapore

2022

circular ruins, Island Gallery, Manhattan, New York, USA
Pranamu, Life Force, Blackburn 50|50 Gallery, Manhattan, New York, USA
The Letter H, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Manhattan, New York, USA
Chew, scroll.nyc, Manhattan, New York, USA
AIR Annual Exhibition, Textile Arts Center, Brooklyn, New York, USA
Personal Mythologies, La Trobe Institute, Bendigo, Australia
Verso, Field Projects, online
Benefit Exhibition, Smack Mellon Gallery, Brooklyn, New York, USA
Three-Legged Crow, Latitude Gallery, Manhattan, New York, USA
Beast, Chimera, Kin, CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, USA
Year of the Tiger, Hashimoto Contemporary, Manhattan, New York, USA

2021

Book Fell Into The Ocean, Printed Matter/NADA, Miami, Florida, USA
Small Works/Big Impact, Textile Arts Center, Brooklyn, New York, USA
Proximity Alert, Le Maximum, Los Angeles, California, USA
Faculty Exhibition, RISD Museum, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
There was only this world, this looted, ventriloquized Earth, Hook, online
Printed Matter Benefit Exhibition, Printed Matter, Manhattan, New York, USA
In the Wake of Slumber, Paradise Palace, Brooklyn, New York, USA
Quarantine Public Library, Center for Cartoon Studies, White River Junction, Vermont, USA
Futures Ever Arriving, Gallery Jip/Pearl River Mart/Asian American Arts Alliance, Chelsea, New York, USA
Market, Manhattan, New York, USA
Afterlight, Field Projects, online
What Comes After, 601Artspace, online
Year of the Ox, Grumpy Bert Gallery, online

2020

Shady Parts, Chasm Gallery, Brooklyn, New York, USA
Year of the Rat, Grumpy Bert Gallery, Brooklyn, New York, USA

2019

The whole world was not accessible to my gaze, Carillon Gallery, Fort Worth, Texas, USA
Inherit, Rubber Factory Gallery, Manhattan, New York, USA
Every Woman Biennial, La Mama Galleria, Manhattan, New York, USA
Smack Mellon Benefit Exhibition, Smack Mellon Gallery, Brooklyn, New York, USA
Night at the Museum, Bubble T, MOMA PS1, Queens, New York, USA
No Place Like, Field Projects Gallery, Manhattan, New York, USA
Red Envelope Show, Flushing Town Hall, Queens, New York, USA

2018

Endless Editions Biennial, EFA Project Space, Manhattan, New York, USA
Ethereal: A Snapshot of Asian-American Artists, Manhattan, New York, USA
Safe Imagination is Boring, Lincoln Center, Manhattan, New York, USA
Immersion, Light Grey Art Lab, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Year of the Dog, Grumpy Bert Gallery, Brooklyn, New York, USA
Send Me Across The Sea, Book and Job Gallery, San Francisco, California, USA
Zine Wall, Chinatown Soup, Manhattan, New York, USA

SELECTED AWARDS

2018-2019 New York Community Trust, Van Lier Fellowship

2018 Ignatz Award, nominated for work with comics quarterly Ley LINES

2017 American Illustrators 36

2015 Society of Illustrators Student Competition

2014 Society of Illustrators West

SELECTED COLLECTIONS

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Manhattan, New York, USA
Yale University, Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library Special Collections, New Haven, Connecticut, USA
School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection, Chicago, Illinois, USA
Rhode Island School of Design, Fleet Library Special Collections, Providence Rhode Island, USA
University of Bennington, Crossett Library Artists’ Book Collection, Bennington, Vermont, USA
University of Pennsylvania, Zine Library, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Asia Art Archive in America, Brooklyn, New York, USA
Ohio University, Special Collections, Athens, Ohio, USA
SFMOMA, San Francisco, California, USA
Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai, UAE
Poster Museum, Manhattan, New York, USA
Quarantine Public Library, virtual