Bodies Between States: An Interview with Artist Kristin Kung By Georgia Stewart

Jun 01, 2026by Milk Room Staff

Kristin Kung’s work is immediately recognizable as something unrecognizable, something otherworldly. Her faces remain legible, while the bodies and the rest of the canvas seem to blend together into a field of geometric, dreamlike haze. Rather than appearing physically logical, Kristin’s work draws from a more emotional place, where figures get caught between dream, memory, atmosphere, and contradicting worlds.

Kristin Kung, Dreamer, 2026

Kristin learned early on that her most authentic work comes from rejecting perfectionism and leaning into a more abstract depiction, leading her to adopt a more intuitive process. Kristin described the most essential part of this as ensuring she communicates through the language of creating rather than through pre-decided meaning. Sometimes, this process involves preplanning or maybe even research, and other times she takes her mind straight to the canvas. Even when she is creating, she alternates among different techniques, based solely on what she desires or feels is right. She dilutes acrylic paint before pouring it onto the canvas, which influences how she places figures and shapes. She uses unconventional materials, such as the sponge from her kitchen sink, to alter the texture of certain parts of the canvas. Then, when she arrives at the face, Kristin picks up a graphite pencil to add intricate detail.

Kristin Kung, Untitled, 2026

Kristin grew up as a dancer until she was 16. Through this, she and many others familiar with the culture in the dance industry became very aware of the pressures placed on female bodies. One of the most consistent elements throughout Kristin’s work is the clearly articulated face,

combined with a fragmented body that dissolves into shape and line. These fragmented bodies seem to even radiate outward across the rest of the canvas through expanding lines, blending, and color. In this, Kristin’s figures reject being defined through conventional bodily standards or recognizable anatomy. The bodies are no longer a site for evaluation, but instead an expansion of emotional space. Many of the figures in Kristin’s work appear as if they are confined, uncomfortably stretched, or fragmented, reflecting the pressure that many women face to restructure themselves to fit societal standards. The square-shaped fragments that blend the body and face with the rest of the atmosphere are reminiscent of containment, categorization, or other structural systems.

Kristin Kung, Sisters, 2025

Kristin described her work as a form of world-making, an experience in which she attempts to create an alternate reality that is ideal for her. These worlds often feel like dreams to Kristin, and this is expressed through her hazy compositions, monochromatic palettes, and a blend of the recognizable and the unrecognizable. Like dreams, Kristin’s work features legible elements, yet logic dissolves completely. The square-like forms, or fragments, that appear across Kristin’s paintings function as an interruption in this dream or alternate reality. Kristin described that even when she is creating these dreamlike, idealized worlds, elements of our reality peek through in the form of these squares. Kristin described this as functioning similarly to a dream, in which the dream itself may be completely irrational or bizarre, yet it often includes elements of waking life

or serves as a metaphor for a prominent thought. These fragments, both physically and metaphorically, resemble glitches, in which Kristin’s idealized worlds lose their cohesion for a moment.

Kristin Kung, Balance, 2026

Kristin has always been interested in depicting a contradiction between softness and fragmentation, the natural and the unnatural, and comfort with the uncanny. Beauty and fragmentation coexist in Kristin’s paintings by sitting in an alternate reality that masks the things that make us uncomfortable, while still allowing traces of the real world to “glitch” through. Kristin’s work isn't reshaping reality completely but rather depicting an emotional space in which identity, idealization, memory, and embodiment become fluid. Although Kristin constructs idealized emotional worlds, the fragmented traces of reality reveal how difficult it is to completely separate ourselves from the pressures of the world that surrounds us.