Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Ji Woo Kim. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Ji Woo, thanks for joining us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?
I had a consistent interest in the creative arts growing up, but I think I really set my mind on pursuing it as a career when I was in grade 4. Initially, I wanted to study fashion or go into design-related fields, but near the end of my secondary education, I decided to study fine arts and got my Bachelor’s in Painting and a minor in Art History with Highest Honors at Pratt Institute in 2018. After graduating from Pratt, my desire to pursue visual arts as a profession was further solidified, and I’ve been lucky enough to do so since then.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I am a visual artist based in New York, and I make paintings that get exhibited in different spaces around the world through art galleries and art fairs. My main medium is currently oil paint, and my focus these past few years has been creating work that speaks to the immigrant experience of searching for community and belonging. As an immigrant myself uprooted to Canada from South Korea during my formative years, the work is entirely personal and largely anecdotal. Although the imagery in the paintings is personal, the motive behind my work has always been searching for a larger inclusion of Asian American and immigrant narratives in the contemporary art scene and comes from a place of hoping to forge a connection with the viewer, as I believe the dichotomy of belonging vs. displacement is a relatable and collective experience.
Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?
I think the most common thing I hear from people who are in a less creative field or even those in design who deal with clients and companies is some variation of “it must be so nice to do what you love as your job.” It is great to have so much artistic freedom, and to also have more freedom in agency, but for me personally, turning what I enjoy doing into a career can be a double-edged sword at times. When something you used to do out of pure enjoyment becomes your profession, it inevitably becomes less playful and more serious. I find myself unable to enjoy the process of painting when I have a certain expectation for how I want to portray something. Even with years of experience painting, so much time in the studio is spent trying to get the correct brushstroke or color, and it’s a constant effort of trying to translate what I envision in my head onto the canvas through my hand. Sometimes, the errors that occur during that translation work out serendipitously, but most times it’s a lot of struggling.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
Up to now, my work has always revolved around themes of identity and community, but I’ve spent the past couple months pivoting from that to something even more personal. I’m currently preparing a body of work for my next solo show at Long Story Short Paris, an art gallery in said city, and I’ve been calling them “breakup paintings.” I spent the last year attempting to pick up the pieces after getting out of a traumatic relationship, and I found myself struggling to make work about belonging to a place, culture, or community, because I was so detached from everything; it just didn’t resonate. How could I continue to make work about connections when I was spending most of my time alone in my apartment, dissociating? With the breakup and that past relationship taking up most if not all of my headspace, it only made sense for me to shift my work towards that direction as well. I figured if I can’t avoid it, I might as well go all in and try to make something of it. To me, it doesn’t feel like a monumental shift, as my work has always been very personal, but I’m curious as to how others will view this change.
Contact Info:
Image Credits
Paul Litherland