featured artists
waiting for home
Strike a pause with artist, Hyojin Kim.
Hyojin Kim’s art is a journey through uncertainty and longing, exploring the concept of waiting as an active search for something intangible. This is evident in her Catching and Grabbing and Shape of Light series, where she reflects on an experience of struggling to capture the harsh midday sunlight as it slipped through her fingers. This pursuit of the elusive is central to her art practice, as she uses the canvas to explore the emotional landscapes of transnational existence.
For Hyojin, waiting and longing are tied to multicultural tensions and feelings of displacement. Through her works, she speaks to the feeling of existing between parallel worlds, never fully at home in either, yet constantly reconciling facets of the two. This is a burden known to many like her, especially those who live in the hope that something meaningful will emerge amidst the chaos of fragmented identities and transient locations.
Hyojin’s One Scene series, which began with casual meanderings around Han River Park in Seoul, expands this exploration of isolation and connection. In that moment, she was taken back to the fleeting yet powerful moment when she spotted a deer in Dusseldorf, symbolizing the complex pathways many migrants traverse, full of unknowns and hidden emotions, yet pulsating precariously with the vague possibility of connection.
Hyojin’s layering of materials is an act of excavation and discovery. Her initial brushstrokes, often marked by deep charcoal, reflect her initial anxiety about confronting the blank canvas. As she works, new forms begin to emerge from the darkness and reveal glimmers of meaning. The sudden bursts of light on her canvases further evoke the ephemerality of hope and connection, brief moments of clarity that fade just as quickly as they appear. While this dynamic reflects the sense of impermanence felt by those destined to carry the weight of multiple identities and cultural expectations, it also encourages viewers to boldly embark on their own negotiation of self, place, and the spaces in-between.
