Education
2025-2027 (expected)
MFA in Studio Art
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA
2021
BFA in Painting
Seoul National University, South Korea
Fellowships & Awards
2026 (forthcoming)
Rare Book Fellow
Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
2025
Pauline Phillips Award
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
2021
Summa Cum Laude
Seoul National University, South Korea
Alumni Association President’s Award
Seoul National University, South Korea
2019
Florence Derieux Award (Student Category)
Art Olympia, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Japan
Ena Sungwon Byun (b. 1996) is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She received a BFA in Painting from Seoul National University and is currently pursuing an MFA in Studio Art at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Ena’s practice centers on the body as an unstable, mediated site shaped by imaging technologies, biological systems, and ecological frameworks. Drawing from personal and archival research, she is drawn to moments when systems designed to render the body legible instead produce speculative and opaque conditions. Her work extends across painting, sculptural, and spatial forms, engaging organic processes and living materials informed by recurring interests in hybridity, reproduction, and nonhuman agency.
CV
Exhibitions
2025
Soil That Swallowed a Star
Group exhibition, Dasigreem Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
2020
BFA Graduation Exhibition
Woosuk Gallery, Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea
2019
Art Olympia 2019
Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan
Teaching Experience
2025
Teaching Assistant, ARTS 413: Advanced Ceramic Projects
Professor: Yun-dong Nam
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
2025
Graduate Assistant
Hanes Visiting Artist Lecture Program
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
2024
Art Educator & Curriculum Developer
Sanxoro Art Studio, Seongnam, South Korea
2015–2022
Fine Arts Instructor
Yoo Atelier Art Academy, Seoul, South Korea