Heejo Kim
- 2D Arts 2025
Heejo Kim (b. 1995, Seoul, South Korea) received an MFA degree in May 2023 from the LeRoy E. Hoffberger School of Painting program at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD.
She received her BFA from the Painting program at Hongik University in Seoul, South Korea, in 2018.
Kim’s figurative oil paintings focus on reestablishing identity and existence through relationships with others and objects. Her practice explores ambiguity by dissolving visible markers of identity such as gender, age, and ethnicity, allowing her figures to quietly “be” rather than act. Informed by the Buddhist concept of Dependent Arising (Yeongi-sull) and Roland Barthes’s notion of tenderness as an ethical mode of being-with, Kim’s work embraces the uncertain space between self and other, where understanding is incomplete but connection is still possible. Her figures linger in stillness, their gestures whispering a quiet will.
Kim’s figurative oil paintings focus on reestablishing identity and existence through relationships with others and objects. Her practice explores ambiguity by dissolving visible markers of identity such as gender, age, and ethnicity, allowing her figures to quietly “be” rather than act. Informed by the Buddhist concept of Dependent Arising (Yeongi-sull) and Roland Barthes’s notion of tenderness as an ethical mode of being-with, Kim’s work embraces the uncertain space between self and other, where understanding is incomplete but connection is still possible. Her figures linger in stillness, their gestures whispering a quiet will.