I make art motivated by the pressure and weight I feel to take personal responsibility for my survival as an artist.
By sublimating the pressure and weight I feel from mere emotion into a visible method of fabrication, I wish to share how beautiful and valuable human manifestation of ‘responsibility-taking’ can be.”
One-of-a-Kind Fine Art
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Limited Editions and Multiples
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Events
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About Yong Joo Kim
Since 2009, Yong Joo Kim has dedicated her practice, crossing the genre of both installation art and wearable sculpture, to explore a seemingly simple yet complex question: “What does it mean to survive under pressure and weight?”
Known around the art world for her pioneering use of hook-and-loop fasteners, Yong Joo Kim started her career creating jewelry out of hook-and-loop fasteners. There were two reasons why she chose hook-and-loop fasteners. The first was to survive as an artist by lowering the weight of financial responsibility associated with material and fabrication costs. The second was to challenge her ability to survive in a marketplace known for pressuring artists to use nothing but precious stones and metals.
Yong Joo Kim’s most recent body of work is comprised of wall installations produced by applying pressure and weight to wall-mounted hook-and-loop fasteners. This body of work signals her intention to sublimate the pressure and weight she feels from mere emotion into a visible method of fabrication.
Her work appears in the permanent collection of Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA), Los Angeles County Museum of Art(LACMA), National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art’s Art Bank (MMCA), Seoul Museum of Craft Art, Pureun Cultural Foundation, and Velcro Group.
She is a Society of Arts and Crafts (SAC) and NICHE award-winning artist with an extensive record of exhibitions across Europe, Asia, North America, and Australia. She has been a featured speaker at premier conferences and exhibitions such as the Society of North American Goldsmiths (SNAG) and Sculpture Objects Functional Art and design (SOFA).
A native of Seoul, Korea, Yong Joo Kim received her MFA in Jewelry and Metalsmithing from the Rhode Island School of Design and her BFA in Arts and Crafts from SookMyung Women’s University. She lives and works in Seoul and Chicago.
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