Heejae Jo was born in Seoul, Korea, in 1987. Having an interest in learning how people acquire emotion and their patterns of behavior, she studied Educational Psychology at Sookmyung Women’s University. Attending a women’s school also gave a great impact on her feministic perception.Studying abnormal psychology in university, she has been questioning the boundaries between normal and abnormal. In her art, she likes to experiment with what we believe is normal—tradition, universal value, and rational ways of thinking. She immigrated to Canada in 2015. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from OCAD University. Her identity as an immigrant and an Asian female with her interracial marriage life is a major subject matter in her art.In 2019, she decided to use her last name ‘Jo’, rather than ‘Shin’ which was granted by the male-centric convention. She chose ‘Jo’ from the names of people she loves the most.