Emily Yong Beck (B.1999)
Jiggly Puff
signed by the artist
glazed ceramic
12.5 x 18 x 18 inches (31.75 x 45.72 x 45.72 cm)
Executed in 2025.

NOTES:

Beck’s ceramic practice investigates how craft and ceramics can intersect with cultural memory and propaganda using forms rooted in traditional vessels, alongside imagery drawn from popular cartoons and childhood nostalgia. Her work plays with familiarity: whimsical, friendly cartoon figures begin as comforting icons but, when re-contextualized in clay, they reveal hidden layers of cultural messaging and ambiguous history. This version of popular Pokémon character Jiggly Puff, in mid-lullaby and microphone in hand, aim to stir a tension between comfort and critique and invite viewers to reconsider the familiar under a different light.

Emily Yong Beck (b. 1999, Daegu, South Korea) is an interdisciplinary ceramic artist currently based in Chicago. She earned her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2021. Beck has held solo exhibitions at galleries including Gaa Gallery in Provincetown, MA; New Image Art in Los Angeles, CA; and Lefebvre et Fils in Paris, FR. She has also participated in artist residencies at institutions such as Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts (Newcastle, ME) and Township10 (Marshall, NC).

Photography by Chris Hanke. Courtesy of the Artist
and The Pit.