Born in 1960, in Cheong Ju, Korea, Ik-Joong Kang has lived and worked in New York City since 1984. He received his MFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York and a BFA from Hong-Ik University in Seoul, Korea. In 1997, he was awarded The Special Merit prize in the 47th Venice Biennale and in 2014 Kang was among the artists featured in the Korea pavilion that received the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Architecture Biennale. Kang has exhibited widely, including a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris, New York in 1996; a two-person show with Nam June Paik at the Whitney Museum of American Art at Champion, Connecticut; and group exhibitions at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Ludwig Museum, Cologne, Germany, and the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea. His work is represented in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, the Bronx Museum of the Arts as well as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, President's Committee on Arts and Humanity, Washington, D.C., the Ludwig Museum, Cologne, Germany; the Samsung Art Museum, Seoul, South Korea. Kang has received awards and fellowships including a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Fellowship, a Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship and Special Merit Award, 47th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy 1997. Kang acknowledges the support of the Ministry of Unification in the process of collecting drawings and materials from people displaced from North to South Korea as a consequence of the Korean War.