Eric Cho

Assistant Professor

(858) 534-5761

Spring 2022 Zoom Office Hours
WED 5-6 pm (make Zoom appointment by email)

Biography

ACADEMIC POSITION & EDUCATION

- Assistant Professor of Narrative Media, Department of Visual Arts, UCSD
- Affiliate Faculty, Program in Transnational Korean Studies
- Affiliate Faculty, Program in Critical Gender Studies
- Affiliate Faculty, Department of Ethnic Studies
- MFA in Studio Art from University of California at Irvine
- BFA in Art with emphasis in printmaking from Pennsylvania State University

Eric Cho is an artist and writer who specializes in narrative storytelling. Whether working in film, comics, zines, video installation, stop-motion animation, or object-based practices, Cho's work often features moments of encounter — between strangers, across generations, and within war zones — that point to the possibility of connection, and thus transformation, within a culture of systemic violence and mediatized surveillance. More recently, Cho's practice has included drawing and writing short stories about illness, healing, and sensory disability; trans life and trans loss; and the neuroscience of memory and emotion.

Cho's stop-motion animation Our Cosmos Our Chaos toured North America and Asia/Pacific from 2005-2011 as part of Still Present Pasts, a multi-disciplinary exhibition on the legacy of the Korean War. Queer-trans video include works such as the Are You Me? video poem series and We Got Moves, an experimental video that screened in early transgender film festivals such as TrannyFest (1999) and Counting Past Two: Performance, Video and Spoken Word with Transgender Nerve (1999). The Heart's Mouth — a commissioned video installation at the San Jose Museum of Art — premiered in the 2013 exhibition This/That: New Stories From the Edge of Asia, while Cho's short film Golden Golden was featured in Trans History in Objects:Trans Video Store, a special MOTHA (Museum of Trans Hirstory and Art) exhibition at the Portland Art Museum in 2018 and at the San Diego Art Institute.

Cho has curated programs for MIX NYC: New York Queer Experimental Film Festival, Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, the Korean American Museum, and was program manager for the Outfest Legacy Project for LGBT Film Preservation in collaboration with UCLA Film and Television Archives. Cho also has television industry experience in post-production for programs broadcast on NBC, ABC, Lifetime, The Learning Channel, PBS, and MTV. Cho has received grant awards from Creative Capital, Hellman Foundation, Traction Foundation, Leeway Foundation, California Community Foundation, Robert Motherwell Foundation, and has been honored as one of OUT Magazine's OUT100.