After a successful exhibition at the solebox store in Vienna, we took the chance to reconnect with Ju and talk about her approach to creating art, digital technologies and how the art world deals with them.

“I always try to make friends with new technologies”, Ju explains. Her openness to incorporate digital and technological advancements into her process with her training in communication design. “I learned all the programs, all the things that I'm using now. Everything was digital in my university. I thought okay, why not use this knowledge and create something new out of it?” This willingness to experiment has resulted in three main pillars – a combination of traditional oil paintings, Augmented Reality (AR) and physical sculptures.

It usually starts out with an idea written down on her notepad or typed into her phone, followed by a digital sketch. Then Ju creates an animation, “and if I'm happy with it I pick one frame that I want to paint.” Sometimes, mistakes happen on the canvas, “or I kind of come up with another color idea.” When asked about her inspirations, she points to her background as a yoga teacher. The juxtaposition of the slow and spiritual and the very fast and digital world is “what I try to depict with my paintings.”

Ju never studied art or had any connections to galleries or people within the art world. This provided her with a blank slate to find her voice, free of expectations or affiliations. “I think there are two groups: the digital art people and the traditional art people. And I'm in the middle of both.” While younger artists and galleries are becoming increasingly open to the digital side, there are still many who do not appreciate it. But she sees the art world changing, “and I think that’s good, to be honest.”

Change remains a constant in Ju’s work as well. “I still have many of the same shapes and aesthetics I had two or three years ago. But I also get bored if I do the same thing for too long.” This applies to the tools she uses as well, increasingly incorporating AI into her sketching process, and further experimenting with other digital mediums. It’s a logical step according to her, even envisioning online-only exhibitions that can be visited by virtual reality: “Wouldn't it be cool to maybe have some kind of digital space you can enter and walk around in to see the artwork?”

Looking back on her solo exhibition in the solebox store in Vienna in October 2023, speaks on the works she showed there: “I showed a series called Metamorphosis and worked on several paintings which were all about the topic of growth.” People were able to walk around and play around with the Augmented Reality element through an app. “We also made a video beforehand about the process, about my work, about the meaning behind the artworks, and it turned out pretty nice.”

Right now, Ju is preparing for her upcoming exhibition called “Good Luck” at Better Go South gallery in Berlin, from 4th of July until the 1st of August: “I'm really looking forward to it. I don't want to say too much about it, but it's going to have a playful background.” Check out the gallery’s page here for more details.

Ju also recently launched a new collection of vases with Motel a Miio that you can check out here. If you want to learn more about Ju herself, head to her homepage or her Instagram account.