We recently connected with Diana Noh and have shared our conversation below.

Diana, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

As everyone knows, working as a full-time artist is not an easy path. Not to say that other occupations are easy, but I have constantly heard from others that committing to become an artist is a rocky road and nothing is promised. This effected me deeply as I was just coming out from my undergrad school. I had tried out multiple jobs that was somewhat related to my major which was photography. I worked as an assistant curator, commercial photographer, photo editor, and tapped into art therapy. During this journey I realized I was the most intact when I maintained my own practice. I did enjoy and was good at these jobs but my heart wasn’t racing as I get excited doing random experiments to my practice. Everyday felt the same without any stimulation and I felt really trapped into a cycle that was going to go on forever. This is when I realized I needed to pursue being a fine art artist, even though there wasn’t any solid promise on the road. At this point, I knew how much intact I will be and enjoy my everyday life if I pursued to become an artist.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am Diana Noh an interdisciplinary artist working with photography, fiber, and installation. My practice celebrates reconstructions of distressed photographs of architectural spaces and landscapes, exploring themes of trauma embedded in familial relationships and cultural in-betweenness.

Coming from a strong photography background, I wanted to create something that is out of the conventional frame. I felt like as photography has a short history in the fine arts compared by other mediums there is still a lot of fun ways I can try to break the norm how a traditional ‘fine art photography’ should be. So as my practice advanced dramatically in my graduate school years, I started physically tearing, burning, stitching, crimping and assembling my photographs and make ‘refracted photographs’ as I like to call. I take pleasure mixing up craft materials to my work as well, from 2023 I actually started introducing more of my Korean roots into my work by using Korean craft materials such as mother of pearl, Hanji, traditional Korean embroidery, Meok etc.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

My ultimate goal of my practice is to embrace and understand my inner-self intactly. And if I am ambitious, to fix the emotional and relational cracks between my family, especially my brother and my mother. My work is mainly about my feelings and emotions, expressing them in a visual for rather than a vocal form. I feel as my practice progressed, I learned how to let go of my past frustration towards my family, reflect myself and fully recover from the emotional wounds I have gained. I now am actually in a place willing to start a separate body of work exclusively talking about my relationship to my mother. As every mother and daughter has a unique and similar relationship, I hope during this journey I can invite my audience’s unique but somewhat similar stories about the relationship of theirs.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

I definitely think the most rewarding aspect of being an artist is you set your rules and boundaries! In my practice, I embrace imperfection also as a part of my practice and I treat if an incident happens as it was meant to be. For example, if I was sewing my piece together and accidentally made a wrong stroke in my work, instead of trying to perfect them I just go with the flow and make the correct stroke next to it. This is also because I invite ‘chance’ as a huge part of my work process, as I consider how I am as a person now is not only solely based on myself; it is also reflected by others. In a commercial standard, this might be seen as imperfection and impurities, something that you should avoid and fix. But in my practice they are not. So this also encourages myself not be afraid to experiment new bold and odd stuff that I have never tried and even the most craziest thoughts.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.diananoh.com
• Instagram: @moontidal.wave