Kanghee Kim’s Surreal Photography Art: Breaking Reality Boundaries for Healing Oneself and Others
Kanghee Kim is a Korean-American artist based in the United States and one of my favourite creators on Instagram. Her work is overflowing with surrealism, and her wonderful fusion of urban landscapes and natural elements seems like a window to escape reality, inspiring my endless imagination.
Due to her visa status, Kim was unable to leave the United States, which kept her in the same places every day. But Kim used her imagination to create surreal spaces that are inaccessible to humans with the help of photography and Photoshop, presenting breathtakingly fantastical images in the places she can reach. In her creative process, Kim doesn’t plan in advance but rather draws on the photographic material she accumulates on a daily basis to merge and change, a process she says frees her from the constraints she places on herself and on the outside world. Kim’s work dissolves the boundaries between reality and fantasy and transgresses the boundaries of the digital realm of creativity.
This is exactly what I hope to be able to achieve in my future direction, which is to break the limitations of technology and realize the convergence of multiple media.
Although Kim’s works convey a sense of serenity and pleasure, they are in fact created in the context of the artist’s own location and search for self-identity. It reminds me of the period of lockdown due to COVID-19, where we were also restricted in our movements and therefore could not help but start looking for different sights to soothe our confusion about the present and our uncertainty about the future.
I have attempted to incorporate this surrealistic effect into my work this semester, and although I was ultimately unsuccessful, I wanted to share the beautiful work of Kim, the artist, in the hopes that there will be opportunities for future creations to achieve self-healing and help others heal.
*Reference:
https://instagram.com/tinycactus?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
https://www.artsy.net/show/benrubi-gallery-kang-hee-kim-dreamer?sort=partner_show_position
