Johanna Hedva


Johanna Hedva is a genderqueer Korean American contemporary artist, writer, and musician working in Los Angeles, and author of "Sick Woman Theory" and the novel On Hell.

Early life and education

Born Johanna Randall Reed in 1984 in Santa Barbara, California, Hedva was raised in Los Angeles. At age 22, Hedva began studying astrophysics at a city college before transferring two years later to UCLA to study design. Graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Design from UCLA in 2010, Hedva earned a Master of Fine Arts at the California Institute of the Arts in 2013, and a Master of Arts in Aesthetics and Politics at the California Institute of the Arts in 2014.

Career

In 2014, Hedva held an Interdisciplinary Artist in Residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts in California, and a Writer in Residence for Project X Desk at Outpost at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena.
In October 2015, Hedva delivered a lecture at the Women’s Center for Creative Work titled, "My Body Is a Prison of Pain so I Want to Leave It Like a Mystic But I Also Love It & Want it to Matter Politically". The LA Weekly described it as a "smart, compelling talk... which became the essay 'Sick Woman Theory' ". The essay "describes her own chronic, confounding illness and the impersonality of the Western medical industry, and suggests that the greatest enemy to capitalism is taking care of yourself and of others". Sick Woman Theory posed the question, "How do you throw a brick through the window of a bank if you can't get out of bed?" Influenced by Ann Cvetkovich's scholarship on depression, Sick Woman Theory takes illness as not a solely biological phenomenon, but a social and cultural one, claiming that "the body and mind are sensitive and reactive to regimes of oppression," and affirming the role of collective historical trauma in producing illness. Lauren Fournier wrote, "Johanna Hedva articulates an ethos of agency for those living with chronic illness".
Artslant Magazine reported:
Dundee Contemporary Arts said:
In February 2018, Hedva published "Letter to A Young Doctor," in Triple Canopy's Risk Pool issue. "A document of emergency," an epistolary essay on the terms of engagement between patient and doctor.
On 14 February 2018, Sator Press published Hedva's novel On Hell. The book has been praised by Dennis Cooper, who listed it among his favorite fiction of 2018. Janice Lee wrote, "Brilliant. Fervent. Unafraid and unapologetic. This text will consume you." According to Hedva, "On Hell is my attempt at a 21st-century version of Icarus, from a crip perspective."

Performances

From 2012-2015, Hedva wrote and directed a series of plays and performances titled The Greek Cycle. These plays are adaptations of ancient Greek texts which have been rewritten to include feminist and queer concerns in contemporary discourses, like Hedva's adaptation of Medea, with the role of Medea rewritten to be performed by and as a genderfluid, queer person of color in exile. Most take place in unusual locations; for instance, Odyssey Odyssey, an adaptation of Homer's Odyssey, was performed in a Honda Odyssey minivan being driven by a performer.
In April 2019, Hedva performed Black Moon Lilith in Pisces in the 4th House, a solo of guitar and voice, as part of the disability festival I Wanna Be With You Everywhere at Performance Space New York. They also performed this as part of No End and No Beginning in January 2020 at Wellcome Collection, London.
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Processing Foundation

Since 2014, Hedva has served as the Director of Advocacy for the Processing Foundation, an auxiliary operation to the Processing open source computer programming project with the goal "to empower people of all interests and backgrounds to learn how to program and make creative work with code, especially those who might not otherwise have access to these tools and resources." Hedva joined the project based on their political activism, and their commitment to "open-source philosophy and practice, decolonial politics and action, and to promoting the attenuation of the boundaries between creative disciplines of all kinds" During a talk at a Processing conference on diversity, Hedva spoke about their goals for the Processing Foundation as "an institution defined by having to constantly re-institute itself," characterized by continuous growth and criticality. In their role with the foundation, Hedva helped establish a fellowship program in 2015, which focuses on issues of access to Processing software across society. Speaking on the program, Hedva states that "technology can be both a viable artistic medium as well as a model for sociality," where tools are learned and developed through exploration and collaboration.

Awards

They were selected for the 2010 Best Work, Undergraduate Exhibition Award at UCLA as well as the Marion Lucy Queal Scholarship and the 2013 CalArts Dean's Project Award and Interdisciplinary Grant.

Selected works