Artist Statement
My work is rooted in material curiosity, ritual, and the unexpected whisper of sentimental objects.
The Core
By profession I am a designer working at Jane Street in New York City, with prior roles at Meta Platforms, Raytheon Technologies, Squarespace, Uber and leading design agencies.
Yet beyond the corporate office and screens I am drawn to natural and human made products such as packaging byproducts, discarded objects, sound explorations and the quiet practice of making physical objects.
My Approach
I believe in human ritual, intuition and system. My commercial work builds software and digital products that support trading, research, interaction — structured, efficient, rigorous. But my personal practice uncovers the fragility, the idiosyncrasy, the poetic glitch in systems:
I photograph the world and its textures.
I diagram systems and map relationships between me and my surroundings.
I pick up found objects and treat them as surfaces of pattern and meaning.
I explore ambient sound as a ritual, searching for healing and resonance.
I interrogate branding, consumer culture, labels, and what it means to resist them (‘Anti-Branding’).
These threads converge into a practice that is less about a medium and more about mindset:
Systemic awareness: noticing how parts relate, how interfaces mediate experience, how flows of use map to flows of meaning.
Material curiosity: the foam tray becomes a diagram; the cat’s movement becomes a rhythm; the ambient sound becomes a field of felt space.
Ritual & reflection: discarded byproducts becomes an anchor; making sound becomes a ritual; seeing plants become living systems I care for.
Resistance & play: questioning existence, exploring oddities, making art for the sake of the sublime and the strange.
What the Work Offers
My commercial design practice offers clarity, intelligence and structure — building intuitive, resilient product experiences that serve users and business alike. My personal work offers pause, reflection, surprise — an invitation to look at the everyday sideways, to find meaning in the margins and beauty in systems both rigid and organic.
In a world where so much is optimized, streamlined and hidden behind slick interfaces, I choose to surface the seams: the foam trays, the ambient hum, the plant’s growth, the cat’s gaze. These are the things that remind us of being human, of systems we inhabit but don’t always see.
My Intention
I aim to bridge these worlds: to bring material sensibility into digital product design, and to bring digital system-thinking back into art and making. I hope the work—commercial and personal—illuminates the architecture of everyday life, invites curiosity, and instills a sense of care for the interface between people, systems and objects.
–– Zarni Ko
New York, 2025
