Catalogue

AfterThoughts (ongoing project)

The project expresses the values we overlook in our busy lives through painting, sound, technology and performance, based on philosophical thought.

Meeting friends who live in different countries, with different lifestyles and aims, she has come to feel that something is missing. Most of us seem to live without the space to reflect on what we truly value or who we want to be. Life keeps pulling us away from such essential questions. ‘AfterThoughts’ brings these missing pieces forward, the ones we lose when we are overwhelmed by busyness, hectic schedules and competitive interactions. She hopes this project offers a pause, a moment to sit with what we truly value.

‘AfterThoughts’ in this project can have several meanings. It can be a thought that settles into a new shape as your perspective changes over time. It can be the thought that comes directly after a certain concept or conversation. Or it can be your state or way of being after you have gone through many different ways of thinking. All these meanings are at the core of the project. This project is also about the people you talk with along the way, those who change how you see things, give you time to refine your thoughts, and help you become more of the person you want to be. Her art wants to speak to anyone who needs the beauty of walking a path that is slow-paced yet inwardly challenging, calm yet firm, valuable yet demanding patience.

‘After Liberty’ is the first chapter she is opening with, and further chapters will follow from her reading of Boethius, Marcus Aurelius and Zhuangzi.

After Liberty

Last December, she read John Stuart Mill’s 『On Liberty』, and the vague questions in her head grew sharper. Although it was published back in 1859, much of what he wrote about individuality, freedom, the need for diverse environments, individual development and the dangers of the tyranny of the majority set off a quiet storm inside her. These ideas might seem obvious today, but his words felt like a fist knocking on the doors of the society she grew up in, the environment that shaped her and the mindset she had always held.

The emotional impact of these passages led her to abstract visualisation combined with music composition and other media. Each painting in the ‘After Liberty’ series is based on specific passages from 『On Liberty』, and takes its title from Mill’s own words or messages in that passage. She paints the emotional response each passage provoked in her. The passage is shown alongside the painting it inspired, so viewers can see where each work comes from and carry on their own reflections from the ideas.

With 『On Liberty』, art and philosophy met for the first time in her work. Examining these philosophical messages and discussing them with others is no longer just about finding inspiration or material for her art, but is becoming an essential foundation of her life.

After Liberty

Left
The tyranny of prevailing opinion holds back the growth of individuality.
70 x 50 cm · Oil & oil stick on canvas · 2026

Right
"So monstrous a principle is far more dangerous than any single interference with liberty; there is no violation of liberty which it would not justify."
70 x 50 cm · Oil & oil stick, acrylic on canvas · 2026

Left
"Public opinion means, at the best, some people's opinion of what is good or bad for other people."
70 x 50 cm · Oil, oil stick & acrylic on canvas · 2026

Right
"If it were only that people have diversities of taste, that is reason enough for not attempting to shape them all after one model."
70 x 60 cm · Oil stick & acrylic on canvas · 2026

After Liberty

Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides.
60 x 70 cm · Oil, oil stick & acrylic on canvas · 2026

A person's judgment deserves confidence only when it stays open to criticism and every variety of opinion.
70 x 100 cm · Oil & acrylic on canvas · 2026

After Liberty

Sketch drawings

Each sketch is inspired by the passage from the book 『On Liberty』(1859) by John Stuart Mill.

"Where, not the person’s own character, but the traditions or customs of other people are the rule of conduct, there is wanting one of the principal ingredients of human happiness, and quite the chief ingredient of individual and social progress."

"Not only in what concerns others, but in what concerns only themselves, the individual, or the family, do not ask themselves — what do I prefer? or, what would suit my character and disposition? or What would allow the best and highest in me to have fair play, and enable it to grow and thrive? They ask themselves, what is suitable to my position? what is usually done by persons of my station and pecuniary circumstances? (...)"

"Human beings owe to each other help to distinguish the better from the worse, and encouragement to choose the former and avoid the latter. (...) But neither one person, nor any number of persons, is warranted in saying to another human creature of ripe years, that he shall not do with his life for his own benefit what he chooses to do with it. (...)"

"He is capable of rectifying his mistakes, by discussion and experience. Not by experience alone. There must be discussion, to show how experience is to be interpreted. Wrong opinions and practices gradually yield to fact and argument; but facts and arguments, to produce any effect on the mind, must be brought before it. (...)"

EchoesəvYourFace

This participatory art installation comprises three abstract paintings and 143 interactive LED lights, which respond in real time to the emotions in audiences' facial expressions, detected by a camera using an AI face-recognition model. The detected data transforms the colour, movement, and intensity of the interactive LED lights illuminating the abstract paintings.

Rather than simply identifying a single primary emotion, the AI subtly incorporates secondary emotions, such as traces of surprise within a happy expression, enabling intriguing and nuanced combinations in the light sequences. When multiple viewers' faces are recognised simultaneously, each person's primary and secondary emotions mix, producing unpredictable and varied combinations.

The three main paintings displayed for the interactive installation (Fragments I, II, III) capture the swirling of feelings in an abstract style. It is about the sensation felt while wandering and searching for something, floating and suspended in space. Then, suddenly, every form of emotion overwhelms the viewer, surrounding them and drawing them somewhere among the fragments of memory. It is like a rush of feelings rising from within, like thousands of petals drifting without destination, tangled, spiralling, pulling each other close. It is as if every portion of memory comes rushing in, producing a chaotic longing before letting it drift away, forlornly.

This installation is created in collaboration with Dr Luca Franceschi, a machine learning scientist.

EchoesəvYourFace

Exhibition @ Zemin Berlin, @ Café Karanfil (48 Stunden Neukölln Art Festival)

EchoesəvYourFace

Emotions I–IV
36 x 48 cm each (Unframed)
Oil & Acrylic on 330g/m² paper
2025

Movement I–IV
50 x 70 cm each (Unframed)
Acrylic on 400g/m² paper

Innerscape

A series of imagined emotional landscapes, each accompanied by its own soundtrack, played on the gayageum, a traditional Korean 12-string instrument, composed and performed by the artist.

This series traces the confusing, unsettling experience she went through while becoming someone different over time. It grows out of life between different places and cultures, where belonging is always partial and the sense of home stretches, blurs, and sometimes slips away.

Each painting captures the feeling of standing on the boundary between two spaces, absorbing the overwhelming influence of a new environment while feeling a growing distance from the home country. Moments of confusion, constant adaptation, and the sensation of never fully belonging to either side are expressed in these inner landscapes. When the question of ‘what is the truest version of oneself?’ constantly circles, the certainty of identity blurs, the self feels unstable and strained to its limit, and the emotions and memories shaken by different expectations and meanings appear as 'Innerscape'.

The melodies of the gayageum strengthen the emotion of the artist finding herself where different cultures clash. These soundtracks contribute to a multi-sensory experience, fusing sound and colour into a more intended emotional state. This allows viewers to do more than look at the landscape; they feel its rhythm, tension, and subtle inner changes as if walking through her memory.

▶Listen to the soundtrack

▶Listen to the soundtrack

Innerscape

▶Listen to the soundtrack

▶Listen to the soundtrack

The Misty Heaven

This is the first series to capture the artist's working method, which involves an interplay between spontaneity and control.

One sketch showing objects floating within a misty, dreamlike space recalled the ascending saints found in the works of Old Masters, which became a motif for her works. Their dynamic compositions, fantastical moods, elegant styles, and balanced relationships among figures influence her art.

The artist has an instinctive desire to control, even while occasionally longing for a spontaneous approach to life. This duality is reflected in the creative process. Free, unconscious brushstrokes gradually coalesce into recognisable forms. Through the intentional shaping of these figures, the process goes through unexpected moments of creation. Objects floating within the composition, rendered in dark or intense hues with dynamic brushwork and fluid motion, evoke a sense of movement and vitality. In contrast, bright, serene colours and soft textures create a static, misty atmosphere that balances this dynamism.

The Misty Heaven

The Misty Heaven

Dance (Hani-mation)

A portrait of the artist made through the body, holding her emotion as it came, before shaping it. A quiet refusal of fixed identity, of social structure, of the expectations gathered around her, became improvised movement. The work is a declaration made on impulse, a rite in which she lets herself go completely by way of rhythm, memory, and feeling.

In front of a camera triggered by remote, she captures moments of moving freely, mostly to melancholic songs with a few upbeat ones mixed in, gathering more than 400 photographs. The method places her outside anyone else's looking and kept her fully inside the moment, so that what matters is not her appearance but what she feels. With makeup, costume, and outward performance set aside, she wants an honest presence to surface, that of a woman, a Korean, an artist, making her way through the complexity of life in another country. It is, essentially, an act of shaking the body back and forth in order to hold tightly onto a soul.

Choosing nudity here is not simply about symbolizing freedom in a Western context. It is an act of exposure that allows emotion to be revealed completely, and is a direct meeting with the awkwardness and fragility that being unclothed brings. This is especially true for an artist raised in Korea, where nudity is not widely regarded as a common means of self-expression, and so the choice carries an even more distinctive meaning.

The work holds Berlin's freedom and creative charge together with the grey landscape beneath it, the loneliness, the moments of alienation. Here, dance is at once how she shows herself and a language through which she expresses the emotional terrain of the city. Berlin is a place where freedom, solitude, fragility, and a sense of helplessness all arrive together. To live in another country is to translate yourself without end. As the woman she used to be grows faint with time, 'Dance (Hani-mation)' reaches for her, a hand extended quietly to remember her and to find her again.

Dance 1–3 — 29.7 x 21 cm each, Oil and Acrylic on paper, 2024

Dance (Hani-mation)

Dance 4–18 — 29.7 x 21 cm each, Oil and Acrylic on paper, 2024

Chopin

This series began with the artist's passion for Frédéric Chopin’s music, expressing his melodies through visual art. Giving in entirely as the music overwhelms her with emotion, the artist keeps each movement completely instinctive. Without looking at the surface, the brush flows naturally across wet paper with acrylic ink.

Sometimes the focus narrows to a single passage, capturing its pure spirit in a single moment. Other times, a whole musical piece becomes the entire art piece. A single Chopin nocturne repeats in the background during the work, allowing fresh brushstrokes to respond to and overlap with what came before. Every new listen sparks a different feeling, leaving behind a physical buildup of emotion on the paper.

This body of work shows exactly how the artist’s bond with classical music becomes a practical way of making art. This straight line from sound to art creation is growing into the 'AfterThoughts' project, where visual art and music meet to express philosophical ideas.

Untitled 10–15 — 36 x 48 cm each, Oil pastel, Acrylic ink on paper 310 g/m², 2025

Chopin

Untitled 7–9 — 36 x 48 cm each, Acrylic ink on paper 310 g/m², 2025

Untitled 1–6 — 36 x 48 cm each, Acrylic ink on paper 310g/m², 2024

Connection

Gazing down at the city lights from a plane window, the artist caught herself thinking that the world is woven entirely from a vast web of relationships. Some connections grow from a heartfelt bond, while others originate from the weight of obligation. Within that space, the boundary between what is freely chosen and what is maintained out of necessity frequently blurs. Human connections are brilliantly beautiful, yet at times they can heavily burden the mind.

Allowing instinct to guide her hands, she moves the brush across wet paper, moving between spontaneity and control. Each time the ink seeps into the surface, the bleeds and dots generate unpredictability, and from that specific moment she finds the intentional forms that can only bloom there. Lines that extend thick and thin, sometimes trembling and sharp, become the delicate and hazy boundaries within our ties, showing the intricate complexity of human relationships. Much like the facets of life shaped by the intersection of intention and chance, she wants to capture on canvas the dual nature of these connections, the coexistence of their beauty and their weight.