Young Ah Ahn: August 2026
Based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, visual artist Young Ah Ahn works across acrylic and digital mediums to construct character-driven narratives. Her practice centers on the direct exploration of imagery, memory, and form. Rejecting static geographic boundaries, her subsequent landscapes reference a fluid composition of multiple regions, countries, and specific locales to examine the changing translation of memory over time.
Young relocated to Pittsburgh in 2020, and her regional presence established momentum following her formal admission to the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh (AAP) in 2025. Her recent work has been showcased in successive area exhibitions, including the AAP 115x115 exhibition (2025), the AAP New Member Exhibition (2026), and the juried Online Variety Show at Concept Gallery (2026). This regional focus builds upon an established international foundation; her previous exhibition history features her 2019 exhibition #Planet Green | 4 Artists at Space Gallery, a 2018 project selected by the Suwon Cultural Foundation in South Korea, and prominent international platforms such as the Amsterdam, Tokyo, and MANIF Seoul international art fairs.
Young holds both a Bachelor and Master degrees of Arts in Painting and Printmaking from Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South Korea. Beyond her studio practice, her professional background includes extensive work as an exhibition planner and as the founder of Gallery Artistroom, an initiative previously established in Seoul for group exhibitions. She is currently advancing her engagement with narrative structures through the pursuit of a degree in English Writing at the University of Pittsburgh.
My work focuses on the boundaries of places, symbols, and reality.
For me, the border of an image is never merely the physical edge of the canvas; it is a vital starting point that extends dynamically outward into space.
This philosophy evolves further in the Landscape Cabinet series, which explores the fluid tension between what is explicitly drawn and what is intentionally omitted. By randomly selecting, deleting, and rearranging disconnected images, these colorful canvases strip visual elements of their original history and memory to construct entirely unfamiliar landscapes. Within these borders, a poignant temporal contradiction co-exists: a unique structural room where a passed history and an unreached future meet.
Ultimately, these paintings invite the beholder to look beyond established concepts or predefined meanings. By liberating these figures from their original geographic and historical contexts, I intend to induce a sense of purity, raw sensation, and deep emotion. The resulting unfamiliar landscapes create a new dimension of commonness, offering a shared space where viewers are invited to discover a completely new perspective.
Current Exhibition:
AAP New Member Exhibition
June 13th–August 14th, 2026
Associated Artist of Pittsburgh
100 43rd St. Unit 107
Pittsburgh, PA 15201Summer Variety: Online Store
Juried by Alison Brand Oehler
June 4th–August 10th, 2026
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