Ga Ram Kim (b. Seoul, South Korea, 1984)

Kim’s work focuses on social and cultural issues through playful participatory experiments. She mainly uses installation, media, and performance to induce audience participation and empathy. She carefully observes various social phenomena around her and attempts to capture an idea of the changing contemporary moment within her artistic experiments. In her works TheSexyBikini.com, Virgin Candy, #SELSTAR, and #FANTASY, Kim focused on the ironic dimensions of situations in which the meaning of value has changed over recent years, or how different levels of meaning creates conflict in the contemporary period. She has deepened her attention with contemporary societal issues at the 4ROSE Sound Project and the AGENDA Hair Salon. In her practice, Ga Ram Kim focuses on the social role of art in an ever- changing society. Through the social platform of the art exhibition, she hopes to use her work to create a meaningful venue for public conversation.

Can you tell us about your background and how you started your artistic journey?

I studied Western painting as an undergraduate, and later completed graduate studies at Chelsea College of Arts (UAL) in London. Looking back, I think the foundation of my practice was set quite early — I always preferred making things with people rather than alone. That instinct naturally led me toward project-based, participatory work. Moving between Seoul and London, I kept noticing how the same social events could provoke entirely different reactions across cultures. That gap — why do people respond so differently? — became the driving question behind everything I make.

What are the main themes or concepts you explore in your work?

My work revolves around socio-cultural phenomena explored through playful experimentation. Recurring themes include internet comment culture, selfie psychology and self-representation, the embodiment of political opinion, and digital intimacy. Rather than asserting a singular message, I aim to create situations where audiences discover their own questions through direct participation. The social function of art — building a space for public dialogue — is the thread that runs through all of it.

Much of your work invites the public to generate the text, images, or movement themselves. How do you position your role as an artist within these collaborative environments?

I see my role as that of a facilitator. Rather than prescribing outcomes or directing the line of inquiry, I design open-ended structures where participants arrive at their own conclusions. In 4ROSE, I curate and sequence the comments, but no single voice is privileged over another. In The Agenda Hair Salon, I trained professionally as a hairstylist to create the space — but how much hair someone cuts is entirely their own decision. I design the frame; what happens inside it belongs to the people.

As digital culture continues to evolve, how do you imagine participation in art will change?

Digital space is constantly redefining the boundaries of participation. Working on #FANTASY, I was struck by how powerfully virtual intimacy operates — in a world where online and offline increasingly blur, a simulated companion can be just as affecting as a physical presence. This work later expanded into #FANTASY Boyfriend Online Dating Pass, where purchasing an NFT grants a one-off Zoom date with a real emerging Korean actor — available in 10, 30, or 60-minute passes, with a total of 12 NFTs minted. Platforms like the metaverse and NFTs — which generated enormous excitement just a few years ago — hold genuine formal possibilities beyond the hype. What interests me is how their properties allow artists to question the patterns of social media culture, where virtual and lived reality are no longer distinguished. Future participation in art will likely become more personalized and immersive without requiring physical presence — but the question of why we participate will only become more complex.

What challenges have you faced as an artist, and how have you overcome them?

The greatest challenge stems from the fact that my work is intentionally distributed outside the art world context — and in doing so, it sometimes steps away from the very framework that would allow its meaning to be fully understood. Because 4ROSE circulates through mainstream music platforms, listeners expecting conventional pop are often confused or disappointed — negative comments do appear. But here’s what I find fascinating: the lyrics of those very songs might be built from comments left by those same people. That irony is part of the work. Over time, I’ve come to see resistance to context-free work not as a failure, but as a sign that the piece is functioning exactly as intended.

What projects are you currently working on, and what can we expect from you in the future?

Following the panel discussion at the ECC in Venice, I’ve become increasingly drawn to the details within Korea’s expanding global cultural footprint — the intimate, everyday moments of the people who actually make K-beauty and digital culture what they are, and that’s the direction my new work is taking. On a personal note, I’ve recently picked up vibe coding as a new hobby, and watching things I once thought impossible at an individual level suddenly become achievable has been remarkable. I want to keep observing and documenting a world in flux — in my own humorous way, of course. Going forward, I’ll continue creating participatory work that moves between digital and physical spaces, returning to the cultural phenomena we take for granted and asking what we haven’t yet looked at closely enough.

Text and photo courtesy of Ga Ram Kim

Website: http://www.garamkim.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/garamkimdotcom/