About

Chuna Chugay is a nonbinary Koryo-Saram artist who grew up in Moscow and is now based in New York. Their work investigates the legacy of the 1937 deportation of Koreans from the Soviet Far East to Central Asia—an act of ethnic cleansing that displaced more than 170,000 people, including their family.

Chuna explores how histories of forced migration reverberate across generations. Drawing from oral histories, family memory, and archival research, they create images that move between myth, personal narrative, and historical reconstruction.

Alongside painting, Chuna is currently writing and illustrating a graphic memoir called That Same Wind about growing up in Russia and the hidden history of the Koryo-Saram diaspora.

photo credits: Grace Muller