Education
2018 BA, Sungshin Women’s University, Seoul
Solo Exhibitions
2025 Invictus, Passing Through a Moment, Sowol Art Hall, Seongdong Cultural Foundation, Seoul
2025 Invictus, Seeing Again, SAPY, Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture, Seoul
2023 The Beauty of Anxiety, CYart Space, Seoul
Group Exhibitions
2023 Dealing Art Project Exhibition, Mansion Nine Gallery, Seoul
2022 Consumer’s Hope Price, Empty Space, LES601 Seongsu, Seoul
2022 Drawing-ing, Empty Space, Insa 1010, Seoul
2022 Art Korea Grand Exhibition, Insaart Plaza, Seoul
Artist Statement
As a child, I often spent long hours alone at home, waiting for my parents to return. Even at a young age, I felt a wide range of emotions in that empty space. On nights when I was left alone until late, I would be overcome with loneliness and fear. This is the first memory I have of anxiety. At some point, I began to turn to painting as a way to confront and release the anxieties I carried. My early works were direct expressions of that inner unrest.
One day, I learned that my father had been diagnosed with a serious illness. From the moment it was discovered, the disease was already at an advanced stage, and I was struck with deep despair. Yet I set aside my sorrow and did everything I could—comforting my father while researching hospitals and treatments. Hoping for his recovery, I resolved to become a living donor for his liver transplant. The surgery and the long recovery that followed became the greatest challenge of my life. No matter how much pain I endured, I believed it was worth bearing if it meant I could protect him.
I had hoped that life would return to normal after the transplant. However, reality unfolded differently. My own recovery was difficult, but witnessing my father’s struggle was even more painful. Despite the suffering caused by complications, my father fought tirelessly to live. Yet before long, his illness returned, and I came to realize that our time together was limited.
Watching my father’s final days forced me to reflect deeply on human suffering and anxiety. I began to weave my emotions, as well as questions about life and death, into my paintings. Feelings of resignation and hope, loss and recovery, despair and resilience became imprinted on me through this experience and grew into central themes of my work.
I asked myself: How can beauty be found even within suffering? The anxiety and pain I experienced during my father’s illness often left me powerless. Yet, paradoxically, they became the very energy that gave me courage to undergo surgery for his sake. Anxiety and pain can drive a person into darkness, but the struggle to overcome them can be profoundly beautiful. My works seek to embody these emotions and sensations.
In my paintings, I frequently draw upon human figures and elements of nature. Among them, water is a recurring motif. I am captivated by its shifting qualities—whether as sea, river, or puddle. Water is unstable yet flexible, calm yet capable of great turbulence. Its ever-changing energy serves as a dual symbol of both anxiety and hope in my paintings.
I often use my hands as much as my brushes in the creative process. To me, painting is both an act of leaving traces and of erasure. I leave fragments of emotions on the canvas while wiping away what must be released. Through this process, I instinctively use my hands, feeling the texture of paint and canvas directly. As I work, the emotions I once held within gradually find their form and remain preserved within the painting.
For me, painting is ultimately a way of confronting my inner anxieties and posing questions about existence. Life is never purely romantic; for some, daily life itself can be suffering. Yet I believe that through the struggle to endure, people grow and gain the energy to move forward. That is why I wish to speak of the beauty that emerges from pain.
Through my work, I hope viewers will face the inevitability of anxiety and suffering in human life—and, in turn, discover new energy within themselves.
“That which does not kill me makes me stronger.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche
