Michelle Cho has always understood the American landscape from the perspective of cars. Having grown up with her father being a mechanic, she learned about the American economy, politics, and culture from weaving in and out of her family’s auto shops in two different neighborhoods of Seattle. Michelle’s education, prior to attending the University of Pennsylvania for her MFA and The Cooper Union School of Art where she obtained her BFA, was through gas prices and the changing presidential bumper stickers on family cars. She learned about the severity of climate change through the influx of electric vehicles her father would fix, taxes through pothole-damaged tires, and culture from music that would radiate from the back seat of every automobile that entered the garage.

Attending an MFA program at the height of the pandemic cemented an unwavering set of new challenges that altered the pace of her sculpture practice. Studio spaces were scarce, facilities access limited, and she was suddenly absent from a community in a state she had never lived in. Amidst constant change, the only form of ordinary for Michelle existed within a car. To compensate for restrictions, she rented out private parking spots to build and exhibit sculptures, created a community by asking various Uber drivers how they built their makeshift air partitions, drove up and down highways to rummage for materials. The pandemic completely shifted the way she builds objects: completely dependent and attune to changing predicaments. The pipes begin to resemble an extended exhaust pipe that alludes to an unveiling of what happens behind a wall, and the foraged tires begin to create a revised landscape of defeated American highway systems.