‘Anonymous Was a Woman’, Jae Ko at The Kreeger Museum
Washington D.C.
03 December 2025

Until 31 December 2025, The Kreeger Museum in Washington, D.C., presents ‘Anonymous Was a Woman’—a group exhibition honouring mid-career female artists who have received the Anonymous Was a Woman Grant (AWAW)—featuring Jae Ko, Linn Meyers, Joyce J. Scott and Renée Stout. Among the four featured artists, Korean-American sculptor Jae Ko emerges to present her latest series of sculptural works that transform quotidian material into evocative abstractions that blur the boundary between drawing, painting, and environmental installation.

Jae Ko, who was awarded the AWAW in 2012, has for decades built a practice around paper, which she treats with reverence and an almost ritualistic patience.  For this exhibition, she presents her new Rhombus series (2025), composed of rolled commercial paper stained with sumi and pigmented inks. The works are stretched diagonally within rectangular frames, creating dense yet airy surfaces that evoke shifting skies, rolling hills, or the abstract flow of geological strata. The subtle gradations of green and blue transform the paper into landscapes, inviting the viewer into an immersive environment where light, shadow, and texture merge.

Despite their apparent lightness, Ko’s sculptures carry a weight of meaning; they suggest a meditation on transformation, memory, and the poetic potential of everyday materials. Some of her most known installations have spanned entire rooms, recalling fabric shifting under unseen winds, creating spatial experiences that feel both gentle and monumental.

Overall, ‘Anonymous Was a Woman’ at The Kreeger Museum offers a compelling showcase survey of four distinct practices. Among them, Jae Ko’s artworks of paper and ink transform paper’s ordinariness into scenes of natural grandeur.