She was involved in the Korean avant-garde art scene in its formative years of the 1960s and early 1970s, during the repressive regime of Park Chung Hee.
"[2] In addition, due to the oppressive politics, scathing public opinion of her, and the incessant insinuations that she was a prostitute her avant-garde pursuit waned.
[5] In 1990, she went on a trip to 8 African countries including Egypt, Gambia, Niger, Kenya, Senegal, Sudan, Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, which heavily inspired her paintings.
Shortly after that trip she also visited 6 countries in Southwest Asia: Thailand, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan.
[2] Jung, along with other members of Shinjeon and later the Fourth Group, pioneered performance work in Korean art with what were called happenings (해프닝) after the style of the avant-garde in the United States.
[7] While she didn't label herself as a feminist, Jung used her body and identity as a woman to transgress the societal gender expectations for women of her time.
Transparent Balloons and Nude (1968) was put on by Shinjeon Group at the Young Artist's Coalition's 4th Contemporary Art Seminar entitled “Happening Show.” Chung Chan-Seung and Jung Kang-ja were the main authors of the piece.
[9] The venue, C’est Si Bon music café in Suhrindong, was a famous place among young folk to watch singers perform.
350 audience members attended and were met with the music of John Cage playing on speakers and a tri-colored lighting system that flashed different colors.
One of the pieces exhibited, Kiss Me, was an example of Jung's work challenging and resisting gender normalities in Korean society, a subject that appears across her artwork.
The red rubber glove represented the invisible housework labor women were relegated to do while the title of the piece provocatively contrasts that traditional role.
Kim Yeong-ja sat in a chair and held a clear plastic umbrella above her head while the other 9 performers circled around her, including Jung Kang-ja.
Women artists, including Jung, underwent increased pressure from an ever-more critical eye from the art world and public.
[17] The Murderer (1967) was an installation piece Jung made out of a mix of artistic mediums and domestic items: a Korean room partition that's been punctured to show a collage of a woman's shoes and legs.
This sculptural scene illustrated a woman escaping the literal “frame” of gendered Korean customs that hindered women's sovereignty.
She depicted a woman draped over a bench with a ticking clock hunf around the chest and a heart icon inside a comically enlarged buttocks.
This piece featured a human-sized iron pipe making a deep depression in a queen mattress-sized block of cotton batting.
Although not listed below, Jung was also going to collaborate with Kim Ku-lim and Chung Chan-seung on staging Nam June Paik's piece Sex on a Piano (1969).
Although the screening was canceled, Kim Ku-lim and Jung Kang-ja dressed up in tight white clothing and did a performance in front of 4 slide projectors that displayed images from the film.
Jung's No Body [muche] solo piece was scheduled for the last day and aimed at showing her body/art not just as subject or object but rather as something that has no categorical boundaries.
"[20] Muche, translated as incorporeality, was an idea influenced by Taoist thought that lay beneath the Fourth Group's work, being featured in their manifesto.
Included in the dark, and roughly painted image were red banners that expressed civil discontent towards the oppressive Park Chung Hee regime.
This showed her situation as an artist and mother who had to care for her art and children simultaneously, constantly juggling the impossible tasks of both motherhood and career.
[21] Title Unknown (2001) is a painting that depicts a woman's lips, very similar to her assemblage piece, that are nailed shut and bleeding in a Dali-esque, surreal desert-scape.