Johanna Hedva

Writer, Artist, and Musician

they/them

Los Angeles, CA

Johanna, a Korean American femme, wears a black leather jacket, black pants, and black platform Rick Owens boots. They sit in a wooden chair with one leg propped up on the arm rest.

Johanna Hedva is a Korean American writer, artist, and musician, who was raised in Los Angeles by a family of witches and now lives in Los Angeles and Berlin. Hedva is the author of the novels Your Love Is Not Good and On Hell, as well as Minerva the Miscarriage of the Brain, a collection of poems, performances, and essays. Their essay collection How To Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom will be published September 3, 2024 by Hillman Grad Books. Their albums are Black Moon Lilith in Pisces in the 4th House and The Sun and the Moon.

Hedva’s work has been shown in Berlin at Gropius Bau, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Klosterruine, and the Institute of Cultural Inquiry; in Los Angeles at JOAN, HRLA, in the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time, and the LA Architecture and Design Museum; The Institute of Contemporary Arts in London; Performance Space New York; Gyeongnam Art Museum in South Korea; the 14th Shanghai Biennial; Modern Art Oxford; Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Bolzano; Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Zürich; Museum of Contemporary Art on the Moon; and in the Transmediale, Unsound, Rewire, and Creepy Teepee Festivals. Their writing has appeared in Triple Canopy, frieze, The White Review, Topical Cream, Spike, and Die Zeit and is anthologized in Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art. Hedva’s essay “Sick Woman Theory,” published in 2016, has been translated into 11 languages.