Soo Joo

You might recognise Soo Joo Park from the countless magazine covers she has graced over the years—global editions of Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Allure, W, or maybe from the runways of just about every big fashion house around. Perhaps she looks familiar from her days as an exclusive face of Chanel, or because she was the first Asian model to be a global ambassador for L’Oreal. Wherever it’s from, it’s safe to say that you know Park’s face, because she is a supermodel.

But she is not just a supermodel.

She is, at times to a fault, more heart than head, letting emotional instinct and interest guide her through life, the result being a sympoietic artist in a state of constant evolution whose next move is as good a guess yours as it is hers.

Whether it’s acting on the Emmy-nominated series Sense8 from the Wachowskis (The Matrix) or the upcoming thriller The Trainer directed by Tony Kaye (American History X), working with world-renowned artists Philippe Parreno and Pierre Huyghe on a conceptual digital art project, or simply pursuing various projects in art and design borne from her days as an architecture student at UC Berkeley, there’s very little that Park hasn’t tried. Despite her endeavours and forays in all creative fields, the one she has constantly found refuge in and returned to is her first love—music.

For Park, music is both an introspective, intimate practice as well as an outward, universal catalyst for a great night out. She has been quietly writing and composing music for years, jotting melodies and lyrics down whenever she finds a moment, to be responsible for a great night DJing parties full of movers and shakers for Chanel, Canada Goose, and many others. The general public first got a taste of Park’s musical proclivities when she married her music with her modelling career, performing live on the runway for the Chanel Métiers d’Art 2021/2022 show.

As grateful as Park was (and is) for her modelling career, she found herself feeling like she was simply an avatar for someone else’s product or vision. Every job was her floating into someone else’s dreams for a day or two then returning to her reality with some photographic evidence as an artefact reminding her she had been there.She started to feel like a visual commodity, selling her image and name as a brand that could be discarded as quickly as it had been demanded. Was she still Soo Joo Park, or was she simply a medium upon which others placed symbols and messages? Was she just a supermodel ?

With the release of No Ghost, Park is reclaiming her agency as a living, breathing, human being. She is not just your face, and in turn, there is no brand or designer to take the blame or to curry favour. There is just Soo Joo Park, vulnerable as the day she was born, forfeiting the safety net of a cosign.

No Ghost consists of five tracks that Park worked on tirelessly for the past two years, all born from rough demos, or one-line ideas scribbled down between 3 and 6 AM, jet-lagged and in a different city.While on the surface, these are songs of love or loss, Park intended to capture all the feelings and emotions that come when trying new things in life. The songs are all a little scared, a little excited, tender, intimate and naive. They are learning as they go, and they are trying their best, but they are out there now, so they are relieved.

Genre-wise No Ghost is tricky to define, but it is a true amalgamation of Park’s specific yet expansive taste in music. Think country pop from the 50s, girl groups of the 60s, ambient Japanese music from the late 90s/early oughts, and then run it all through a filter of shoegaze. Look for a little Phil Collins’ Face Value and Linda Ronstadt in there too, while you’re at it.

With No Ghost in your hands now, Park is not resting on her laurels, but voraciously working on even more music, collaborating with such visionaries as Oneohtrix Point Never, Dave Sitek, Rodaidh McDonald, Nosaj Thing, Hudson Mohawke and many others for upcoming shows and releases. No Ghost is not the climax of Park’s long musical history, but just the beginning of her contribution to the next great American Songbook.