It's Hard to Express by Kate Bang
Kate Bang
It's Hard to Express
November 6, 2025–May 31, 2026
Don Wheaton Family YMCA (10211 102 Ave, Edmonton)
Monday - Friday: 5:30 a.m.–9 p.m.
Saturday & Sunday 7 a.m.–9 p.m.
Kate Bang explores the complexities of belonging and identity shaped by life between cultures. Combining elements of surrealism and realism, her paintings bridge memory, imagination, and lived experience. Drawing from her journey as a Korean immigrant, Kate Bang transforms feelings of displacement into reflections of pride and self-acceptance. This exhibition invites viewers to contemplate hybridity, resilience, and the search for harmony within cultural tension.
About The Artist
Kate Bang is an Edmonton-based Korean-Canadian artist whose painting practice explores themes of identity and cultural hybridity. She holds a BFA in Art and Design (University of Alberta, 2022) and is currently pursuing an MFA in Painting at the same institution. Her solo exhibitions include It’s Hard to Express (Nova Gallery and Gabriola Arts & Heritage Centre, 2024) and I Am Not Really Here (Riverbend Edmonton Public Library, 2022). Kate Bang’s work has also been featured in major group exhibitions such as Free for All at the Art Gallery of Alberta and CONNECTIONS at the Royal Alberta Museum. Her creative research has been supported by the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation and the Canada Council for the Arts, and she has completed international residencies in France and British Columbia. Through layered pictorial spaces merging realism and surrealism, Kate Bang transforms feelings of cultural dislocation into visual narratives of belonging and resilience.
Artist Statement:
My paintings explore the idea of belonging and what it means to exist between cultures. I use a combination of direct observation and photographic references to build pictorial spaces that merge elements of surrealism and realism. These spaces act as bridges between memory and imagination, inviting reflection on identity and the complex experience of cultural hybridity.
Having immigrated as a child, I often felt ashamed of being Korean. I tried to blend in with my caucasian peers, believing that acceptance required abandoning parts of myself. Yet I was constantly reminded that I was different through subtle exclusions, glances, or words that made me aware of my difference. At home I was encouraged to honour the traditions that those outside our household did not understand, deepening my sense of disconnection. I grew up feeling suspended between two cultural worlds, never fully belonging to either.
My art has become a way to process and reconcile these conflicting experiences. Through painting, I transform repressed emotions of shame, displacement, and confusion into expressions of pride and understanding. Each work allows me to reclaim control over the narratives that once confined me and to celebrate the fluidity of multicultural identity. Creating these images is both a personal and collective act, one that reflects the broader experiences of immigrants navigating dual cultural expectations.
In this ongoing exploration, I seek not definitive answers but moments of clarity within contradiction. My practice serves as a space where fragmented identities can coexist, and where the chaos of cultural tension can be reimagined as harmony.
For More information:
www.katebang.com