Soyoung L. Kim: The Power of Home
“Because art is a place that is home for me, it has to exist.”
By: Julie Schmoll
Soyoung Kim has the power of evoking physical space on the canvas. Her work delicately balances abstraction with a sense of being physically placed there.
Kim describes her childhood interwoven with art: “Art was something that was always there for me. I was always making things and drawing and writing as a child. It was the only space where I could go to just be me. I was born in South Korea and when I was six, my parents moved our family to Nairobi, Kenya. It was a big shift in our lives and it was my first time encountering a different language, different people. At first, I had no idea what was going on. So at school, I would sit and draw and it seemed to provide a way for other kids to relate to me. It provided a connection to other people and outlet for me when I was still acquiring the language I needed to speak. In that way, art played a central role in my childhood. In a way, it was like home.”
As Kim grew, art grew with her. “Making art and being in that place has always been home for me because it was the only thing I could carry with my to all the places I moved because it was within me. My parents were always encouraging of my art, although they were not encouraging of me to study art in college because they didn’t want me to starve,” she half jokes. For a short time, she joined the legions of others who have been deterred from making art by the stereotype of the starving artist.
As she continues, “Because my parents discouraged me, I didn’t pursue art in college, but it was something that I couldn’t stop doing. There are many women who study art and then once they start having kids, they stop. When I was a young woman in my early twenties, I just didn’t want to leave it. And even if I did, I couldn’t stop. I had to make. Even if they were small things, little things, it didn’t matter. It was something I had to do because it was me.”
“It was my way of looking at and interacting with the world. Because art is a place that is home for me, it has to exist,” explains Kim.
She explains the root of her process, “What I always ask is ‘what am I trying to express here and what is the medium that will best express that?’ I don’t stick to one medium. I am an artist that practices mixed media. In that way, I evolve over time because I latch onto something because I feel like that is the best media to express what I need to express right now. Certainly, when I was in my twenties and thirties and I was busy having children, I didn’t have a lot of time or mental space to create artwork and so my artwork was smaller in scale. Back then I was using a lot of water color and collage to create small pieces that were surreal. Always my work tends to be this place in my imagination, this home in my head. That has evolved into abstraction. I have definitely felt at home in abstract expressionism. I am shifting gears again and starting to incorporate figures into my work. I am in the midst of creating right now, but abstraction is here to stay. It might not look like complete abstraction. I feel happy in abstraction.”
Kim’s work is beautifully grounded. Even in works that have a lot of line and movement within the piece, there is still and element of the work that makes it feel placed. Between bright pops of color and bold line, there is a stillness. Her particular genius is the ability to balance elements that, at face value, appear opposite from each other. “Adaptation” has movement and almost a clam. “Patience” is reaching out, while also having lines that reach down in the bottom right hand corner. “Cloud search” Hot colors and cool colors come together to create stillness. “I am always trying to seek beauty but also allowing emotion to explode,” Kim explains. “I am always trying to walk that fine line, because that is life. There are explosive moments, but there are also calm and mundane times too.”
“It might have a lot to do with process. When I am making, a lot of my work has to do with layers. That might be where the calmness comes from. I might put down a layer of dark paint, and then a light layer on top and blending, softening the edges. I have details that I want to pop and those are going to be the dots and the lines and the drips. Maybe certain colors I’m thinking about. I let those stand out- blending, muting, and allowing certain details to stand out. I love texture and trying to create texture. It goes back to the multilayer that we all have in our lives. Particularly for me, having lived in Korea and Kenya and now in the United States there are so many stories that I have heard from people and that I relate to and that I am trying to tap into. My goal in creating art is creating that depth and texture, because that is who we are.”
“’Standing on a Foreign Land,’ ‘Come With Me into the Wind,’ ‘Under Tow’ were all created at the same time. The collage pieces were ripped from a piece that I had worked on on another paper. They are all connected. ‘Standing on a Foreign Land’ is an attempt to set down roots. It’s hard to put down roots. They all have a dried vegetative look. It is symbolic of me- being a dried-up thing, tossed from place to place. Trying to root when you are dried up, it’s hard. I was also inspired by Mexico. We were in Baja California Sur. We were hiking and our guide was telling us about an olive tree. The roots can even break through rocks to get to water. At certain times of the year, the trees are bare. That really spoke to me. I thought, ‘That’s me.’ I identify with these plants that look dead, and when the rain comes they bloom, amazing flowers. This is my story woven in there.”
Many of Kim’s work have drips that look like roots. It lends an organic feel to works that builds this notion of place. “I do find so much beauty in patterns and shapes in nature,” she says, which lends to the air of being grounded to the work.
“I did a series of sculptures for my solo show,” Kim said. “I did a series of birds. The little ones, the light ones- I’m really gravitating towards those. I like the abstract forms, the life forms. A lot of it is inspired by nature and vegetation. I was thinking a lot about shapes that I perceive in nature, that have been shaped by sun and dryness and left- but they are still alive.”
Kim goes on to explain her process: “I texture and paint on the wood panels. I build the sculptures separately and then screw them into the panel. When I first started, they were huge installations. I created almost 200 papier-mâché birds and that was a big installation. It was installed above the grand staircase in the Boston center for the arts for their annual fundraiser. It was beautiful, but it’s not like I can sell these. I shifted to abstract organic forms and it has evolved over time in that way.”
The white panels are made up of layers of color, so it isn’t white alone, but white that becomes more nuanced the closer you look. Then the sculptures are affixed on top of these panels and the light hits them and creates more layers of light and shadow. The pieces feel alive. “What I love about sculpture work is that play with light,” Kim says. “When the shadow is cast, it creates an added dimension and almost gives it life.” The work feels familiar. It feels like it could be something you have seen before, but because you haven’t, you lean in close for a second look. That comfort and familiarity is the feeling of home.
In describing her current project, a mural for the show “Field Notes; Lovers, Teachers and the Conscious in Between”, she explains, “the fit was perfect for me because I feel like I’m drawing from the past and present, the future as well. I was asked once, ‘When are you going to make art that is African or Asian?’ and I remember thinking, ‘Well, what is your definition of African or Asian art?’ I am going under the assumption that this person thinks African art can be figurative. Maybe with Asian art they are assuming a lot of ink paintings? Is this what they are asking me? I think my work inherently has African and Asian influences because those places influenced me and who I am today. It is important for me to figure out what those influences look like. When I see people from those places, then I can say, of course the influences are there, because they can see it. This is why abstraction is important to me. In abstraction you are going to a place beyond those expectations. Abstraction deals with taking what we see and experience and doing something else with it. My work deals a lot with memories and how they color who we are. Abstraction allows for that.”
Kim’s work can be found at http://www.soyounglkim.com/, and you can follow her on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/soyounglkim/
Artwork photo credits: Will Howcroft
