Rising Stars: Meet C Ryu of Los Angeles

Today we’d like to introduce you to C Ryu.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
My story is one of a traveller, quite literally and also metaphorically. I’m a child of Korean diasporic immigrants that migrated to the United States for their education. Born in Kansas, but I was raised everywhere else. Because of my parents’ careers, I moved and lived in 8 different States before I was 18. Each time we moved, I struggled but it was these lived experiences that taught me that location dictates history.

As a Korean-American or Asian-American, it was baffling to me to witness how the attitude and behaviors changed drastically in diasporic or immigrant communities due to location and how distinct each region told the same history with a different context. Each region had a different flavor of censorship for the stories that were allowed. What struck me, even in my younger years, was that there were always overlooked voices, in every community, and that history could be a cruel container.

History was and is judgemental and selective; only when someone has enough space and time in their lives to parse through unruly and often neglected archives, do other truths unseen in textbooks appear.

So I became a student, again and again. Not the classroom kind, but the type of student that is a life long learner, an endless journey. I am an artist but my journey no matter what form my career takes, is to listen to others, to be endlessly curious, to be wrong, and to be open to learning because I’ve seen how history has many translations and mistranslations, it’s just about who you are asking the question to.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am an interdisciplinary artist working in collaboration with video installation, experimental capture, performance and social practice. In all of my art practice, I’m interested in ghost stories or the stories that haunt societies, but may not rise to the mainstream surface. To me chasing ghosts is a way of sitting with shame of the collective. Why were these ghosts subjected to only being regaled and remembered in containers of the afterlife? Oftentimes the ghosts I am studying even if they are fictional are tied to real historical events and these stories were an avenue to process the real consequences of war, famine, natural disaster, colonialism, elitism, sexism, homophobia, the list goes on. Most of my practice is me reading books, accessing libraries, even when I am not allowed, finding/following rabbit holes in the fringes of the internet to come across the stories of the strange. You could say my practice is one of listening to the undead whether that’s fictional or historical.

I think I am most proud of “lost | born in translation” (2022-2023) which is a film made completely through a surveillance camera. Made up of 3 chapters with 3 different narrators, the censorship of land, body and stories eerily echo each other, asking and tracing the psychological effects of surveillance in our lives. In chapter 1, I retranslate a story of MAGO, the Korean creator of the universe, a goddess whose body made up the land, a matriarchal mythology that was lost to patriarchy; in chapter 2 I unravel how the consequences of migrations (language barriers, distance in space and time) and the diasporic memory amplifies misunderstandings in my own matriarchal lineage; and in chapter 3 I retell the story of MAGO through a different lens, showcasing how MAGO hid to survive. This video was the first time I really set out to create a spell through the form of video. I wanted to create a spell for those of us affected by migration, for us to remember our strengths and how there have been many of us in the past and in the present who have survived and resisted systems of oppression and terror. It’s a spell for us to take, to remember that we are not yet ghosts, we are still very much alive. And being alive means we still have the chance to resist, subvert, spell cast, be strange, unreadable, and work towards a liberation for us all.

I am also currently in the ICA LA Artist in Residency with my team Hwa Records. I have an exhibition called “Grounding Bodies Casting Dreams” up at ICA LA from September 26 – November 1st, 2026 in collaboration with my teammate Saewon Oh and ICA LA’s youth fellowship program, Agency of Assets. My team Hwa Records will also debut our new performance at ICA LA on November 13th!

Do you have any advice for those looking to network or find a mentor?
To be unafraid to ask. I found my first mentor by reaching out via a cold call email when I was 20/21 years old. I had no relationship to her other than I was a big fan of her work. She changed my life. And truthfully she was so out of my league. My mentor was and is still a huge part of my life, even if she is no longer on this same dimension as we are, as she has passed on to her next life. She was my favorite debate partner. We would listen to NPR and international news together and text about geopolitics, getting into heated conversations about the state of the world. She’s my biggest inspiration and was the one who taught me how important it was to believe that the political was always personal. Her kindness and the way she respected my own views even though she was decades older than me, even when I was just a flailing adult child, is something that I hold near to me as I have stepped into more mentorship and teaching roles. My advice for finding a mentor, send that cold call email or that fan letter. You never know what door will open for you, if you don’t try.

Pricing:

• Wind Fire Oracle or Korean Oracle Card Readings ($80 for a 30 Min Session)
• I offer Korean Oracle card readings based off my history working with Korean mythology and stories of the undead to bring clarity or wind into your life whether it be about ancestral messages or life messages such as career advice, love, family or friend relationships, etc

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.cryu.net
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/c.ryu_portal/
• Other: https://windfireoracle.com

Image Credits
First image: “lost | born in translation,” C. Ryu, 2022-2023;
Installation documented with Ryu performing at the Miller Institute for Contemporary Art, Pittsburgh, PA;
Photograph by Tom Little

Mask made by Kayla Tange; Photo taken as a part of 2023 Warhol Museum Campaign Photoshoot, Photo Credit to: Tom Macconnell

“A l i c e & A l i c e: in free fall,” C. Ryu, 2023-2024;
Installation at Bunker Projects, Pittsburgh, PA
Installation Documentation by Tom Little

Wind Fire Oracle: Card Readings by C. Ryu