Much of their work focuses on queer bodies, how they have been represented in art history, and how they form communities.

Kwak is the lead singer in the band Xina Xurner, and a founding member of the collective Mutant Salon.

[5] They have described their work as investigating “traditional patriarchal standards of beauty in relation to the history of white supremacy, imperialism, and current social justice issues.”[6] Their sculptures often consist of amorphous bodily forms are made out of in plaster, plastics, resin, metal, fiberglass and lights.

[7][1][8][9] In a 2014 review for Hyperallergic Magazine, Alicia Eler wrote of Kwak's exhibition, "Young Joon Kwak’s work is neither binging nor representing — it is a purging, a releasing of one identity not necessarily for another, but for the continued evolution of the self in its variously emerging forms.

They are the lead singer of the band, and use heavily distorted vocals [3][6][12][13] Kwak has received the Korea Arts Foundation of America's Artist Award in 2020, Rema Hort Mann Foundation's Emerging Artist Grant in 2018, and the Art Matters Grant in 2016.