Mendy Kong was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. As a child, she was fascinated with drawing and painting. This eventually led her to self-learn Adobe Photoshop in middle school, but it was not until she entered Walter Payton College Preparatory that she was able to fully explore her artistic side. During this time, she held graphic design and screen printing apprenticeships under After School Matters’ program with Gallery37. She now attends the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as a freshman. Though she has not been able to take visual art classes as a political science major, she enthusiastically pursues nonacademic artistic ventures. Currently, she updates her cartoon series on Instagram (@mejournee) tri-weekly and is anticipating the creation of a lifestyle Youtube channel, as a way to pursue moving art and life in the form of videos.

My work exists to transmit my own experiences in order to foster platforms for discussion about where other people have been, what they have done, and who they are. Growing up as a Chinese-American girl in Chicago, I felt deeply isolated in my inability to connect to any of the media I consumed. Though it was beautiful, it was not true. I turn to my pencils, paints, and digital art programs in order to express the beauty of unseen stories, of myself and those around me. I tinker with what is seen as the mundane and the dilapidated. It is what my childhood was—of days of routine and decay. Yet, in spite of that, I am deeply sentimental, craving nostalgia in my food and in my experiences. It is because I seek to demonstrate potential that rises out of the “undesirable.”

My photographs primarily play with perspective and alluded stories. I examine the various scales of human experiences, from up-close to far-away, in order to understand my own occupation of space. In addition, the standstill a photograph, of the halted once-present, provides is a mystery: It asks what was of the past and what will be of the future. Our own memories are altered with every recollection and it begs the question of its legitimacy—perhaps it is better that we remember them with glorification. I am also riveted with the artificial play of colors—most notably pink. It is an enhancement of spaces and objects in order to most effectively convey the nostalgia and tenderness—be it imagined or concrete—that I derive from my own work. As I am “coming of age,” I find it more necessary to hold onto each passing year in this manner.

@mejournee