Asian Art Contemporary

  • Interview | Seoul-Based Artist Moon Kyuhwa

    Interview | Seoul-Based Artist Moon Kyuhwa

    Moon Kyuhwa (b. 1990, Seoul) is a Seoul-based artist who translates personal narratives and lived experiences into a unique visual language of landscapes and interior spaces. She earned her B.F.A. from Gachon University and her M.F.A. from the School of Visual Arts at Korea National University of Arts. Moon’s practice captures the subtle intersections between daily routines and broader shifts in the world, ranging from “disasters that infiltrated daily life” during the pandemic to the vital importance of personal routines in restoring one’s sense of self.

    Her most recent work delves into internal emotional landscapes, particularly the dissonance between one’s feelings and the external environment. Since her debut, Moon has held several solo exhibitions, including It’s Everywhere (Gallery SP, 2025) and Overwintering (drawingRoom, 2023), and has been featured in the Jeonnam International Sumuk Biennale (2023). She has also collaborated on various projects, including the GOBI Artist Suite at RYSE, Autograph Collection (2023). Through her art, she seeks to provide a space for “emptying out” and reflection, offering the kind of deep empathy and comfort that words often fail to convey.

    That’s right, No, that’s right, 2023, Oil on linen, 160 x 180 cm

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

    As a child, I always enjoyed drawing alone more than going to school or studying. When I was in middle school, a friend suggested I major in art, but my parents did not believe in my drawings at first. I had never shown them my work process before. Since I kept saying I wanted to pursue art, my mother called me to her office one day, gave me a sheet of A4 paper and a 4B pencil, and told me to draw my hand in front of her. I did, and from then on, they let me focus on my art without interference. 

    I realized that I would be doing this for a long time when I was in university. The environment at school was quite poor, and the studios were not in good condition. Despite the four-hour round trip, I worked on my drawings at home and carried them to school. I even hired a truck to move oil paintings that hadn’t dried yet. I also researched acrylics and watercolors to find ways to make my work more portable. Seeing myself so excited and driven to work without being told to, I knew that I would keep doing this. 

    Looking back, there has never been anything else I wanted to do. I believe that no two people draw the same and that everyone has something unique to express. I want to continue finding what is truly mine through various experiences. I am moving forward with the strength I gain from that process.

    Cold Movement, 2023, Oil on linen, 120 x 160 cm

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

    I draw stories that start from my own experiences and the things closest to me. I try to look around my surroundings and dive deep into them. I believe that I can express what I have personally experienced best because it is what I know most deeply. Within that, I believe there are stories that only I can tell. 

    My work has evolved along the trajectory of my life. During the pandemic, I felt the sense of disaster seeping into daily life while watching green onions being planted in my neighbors’ yards. At a time when my daily life felt broken and I realized the vital importance of structure, I painted the routines that enrich life, such as exercise and baking. When I moved studios, I drew the difficult corners of the new space I was experiencing for the first time—channeling feelings I couldn’t put into words into my drawings. 

    My most recent work focuses more on deep, inner emotions. It stems from memories of when my emotions didn’t match the weather. Once, when I was overwhelmed by very difficult feelings, I found myself hating the sun because the day was so bright and sunny. I expressed those emotions by drawing that “hateful” sun and documented periods when I would burst into tears for no reason. 

    After hitting rock bottom emotionally, I began to see the emotions of others more deeply. Nowadays, I try to capture the kind of empathy and comfort that is hard to put into words. I hope that my work can be a source of comfort to some, and for others, a time to empty their minds and find stillness.

    Angry Road, 2023, Oil on canvas, 53 x 72.7 cm

    What is your creative process like? Do you follow a routine or work spontaneously? 

    I tend to try to maintain a routine in my daily life. Every morning, I clear my head with a workout before heading to the studio. Once there, I manage my time flexibly depending on my condition and what is needed that day. Some days I just read books, some days I focus only on sketching, and other days I go out to see and experience as much as I can. On some days, I do nothing but paint. I think a lot about what I need most at that specific moment. 

    I believe that for work to go well, I have to be genuinely enjoying it and be completely immersed. To achieve that, I feel it is important to take good care of my mental health, physical well-being, and daily life. It’s also important to keep working consistently. When I enter the studio with a cluttered mind, unnecessary thoughts tend to interfere with my work. I find it crucial to be aware of these distractions and clear them out so I can fully focus. 

    My best work comes out when I’m so absorbed that I lose track of what I’m doing and can’t even hear the music playing in the background. For that to happen, my mind, body, and space all need to be free of any distractions. I strive to reach that state as often as possible. 

    Also, I can often gauge my own mental state by looking at my space. That’s why I try to tidy up and keep everything neat after I finish working. I want to make the space a place where I feel like painting again the very next day. There are many times when I’m too exhausted to do so, but you know that feeling when you look at a certain space and suddenly want to paint or cook? I try to make sure I can feel that inspiration in my daily life every single day.

    Burning Asphalt, 2022, Oil on wood, 61 x 50 cm

    How do you approach translating an experience or impression into a visual form? 

    I work by drawing first and then moving into painting. I draw a lot on paper using various materials like India ink, watercolors, felt-tip pens, and crayons. Then, I spread them out on the floor to see everything at a glance. Once I’ve accumulated enough drawings, I select from them to begin a painting. Because drawing takes so little time, it captures my thoughts spontaneously and even faster than I can think. I really enjoy those moments. When I think too much, my work tends to become overly refined, so I draw often to bring out the raw, unrefined elements. 

    When I’m painting, I tend to produce similar pieces for a while. However, once I feel my hands have become too accustomed to the process, I purposely change my materials. I don’t want to just comfortably increase the volume of my work simply because I’ve grown used to it. I actually enjoy the feeling of my hands becoming “unfamiliar” with the work, such as by suddenly switching from oils to acrylics. Using a medium I haven’t touched in a long time makes me feel like a beginner again. I hope there is always something for me to learn through the act of painting. I believe I can only reach the point of completion and show my work to others when there is a clear reason for me to move from one piece to the next.

    My Weather, 2025, Acrylic on paper clay, 18.3 x 22 x 17.2 cm

    How do you think about space, structure, or composition as a work gradually takes shape? 

    Rather than filling the entire canvas, I try to leave gaps so that air can flow around the center. Throughout the process, I constantly ask and answer myself whether there is a clear reason for each part I fill or leave empty. When I can’t see the path to completion, I turn the piece over and put it away for a few days before looking at it again. The decision of whether a work is finished or not depends entirely on my intuition. While I can’t always have all the answers, I want the marks I leave behind to feel inevitable.

    Even the Water is Warm, 2023, Oil on canvas, 91 x 116.8 cm

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

    I recently concluded my solo exhibition, Being Everywhere, at Gallery SP in Seoul. In this exhibition, I moved beyond flat paintings to showcase relief-style works using paper pulp, and I plan to continue experimenting with expanding the materiality of painting into three-dimensional forms. I also intend to carry on with my series themed “Emotions and Weather,” exploring how our lives mirror nature and how we are interconnected within it. 

    Right now, I am preparing for my next body of work. I still find it difficult to paint with a fixed exhibition schedule already in place. For me, themes naturally emerge and the messages I want to convey come to mind only when I am fully immersed in the act of painting without self-consciousness. 

    I want to maintain this approach, even if it is challenging because I hope for my work to be a natural outcome of countless trials rather than something created simply to be shown. I want to produce work that is authentic. Eventually, I hope that everything close to me—everything I see before my eyes—will naturally approach me as a subject of my art for many different reasons.

    Text and photo courtesy of Moon Kyuhwa

    Website: https://www.moonkyuhwa.com/
    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moonkyuhwa/

  • Interview | Seoul-Based Artist Bigo

    Interview | Seoul-Based Artist Bigo

    Bigo traces the relationships that emerge between the body, objects, and images. She constructs moments in which the audience’s body comes into contact with objects or images, creating situations where perception shifts subtly through touch. As the body overlaps with the image, she explores whether the boundary between self and other can begin to blur. Recently, she has been working with 3D scanning and photogrammetry to record traces of contact, exploring how these traces return as embodied experience.

    tOOOOOrso, 2016–2017, Stacked paper (394 x 545 mm, 273 x 394 mm), wood, sound, Dimensions variable

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

    I am Bigo, an artist working primarily with performance, video, and installation. I initially studied at Hongik University in Seoul but left after my second year and later completed my BFA at the École des Beaux-Arts de Toulouse in France. During that time, I encountered artistic practices that explored the relationship between the body, image, and media in more concrete ways. I was particularly drawn to artists such as Ana Mendieta and Rebecca Horn, whose works approach the body as a medium of thought.

    After returning to Korea, I worked as a designer for several years before leaving my job at the end of 2015 to begin my practice.

    My work begins with questions about the body. I grew up in a Christian environment, where a dualistic view separating the soul and the body was taken for granted. However, during a flight, I experienced a panic attack, which made me aware that the body can respond before thought. While I understood the situation as stable, my body was already reacting in a different way. This experience unsettled the way I had previously separated the body and the mind.

    Since then, I have come to see the body as something that reacts first, with thought following afterward, and my work has developed from this premise.

    Religion and science approach the body differently, yet they intersect in recognizing that the body plays a fundamental role in shaping perception. I am interested in how perception emerges through the relationship between the body and its environment, and how the boundaries of the body can shift depending on the situation.

    I continue to return to the question of where the body begins and ends, often thinking that the mind might exist at the surface of the skin.

    TRACERS 2, 2020, Audience-participatory performance with performers, lighting, and sound-conversion systems, Approx. 60 minutes,
    Photo by Hyunwoo Cho

    In what ways does the body function as a starting point or reference in your work?

    The body is the condition through which perception begins. I am interested in how easily that condition can expand or shift.

    In my work, the body is not an object to be represented, but a site where relationships emerge. Rather than presenting a fixed outcome, I construct specific rules and environments in which relationships can unfold. The work begins to take form when viewers use their bodies to make choices or move within those conditions.

    This approach is evident in the TRACERS series (2018–2024), where audiences, performers, and algorithms interact while maintaining their own sets of rules. The structure of the work is formed through processes of contact, transmission, and tracking. In TRACERS 2.5 (2020), participants in different locations connect through touchscreens, and their interactions are translated into color, sound, and movement.

    Through this process, I came to consider that the body does not need to be physically co-present to establish connection. In some cases, interfaces can precede and generate contact.

    In Splint, the body is perceived differently. While the viewer’s body remains unchanged, AR can make fingers appear elongated, and guided meditation by a performer can evoke sensations such as teeth extending or eyes protruding. In these moments, small discrepancies arise between different bodily sensations.

    For me, the body is not a fixed entity, but a condition that continuously expands through sensation, rules, and mediation.

    Draw with a Mirror, 2017, Two-channel video installation; acrylic mirror, Velcro, chair frame, 8 min 51 sec

    What kinds of experiences or questions guide your exploration of perception and cognition?

    My interest in perception continued through participating in a movement workshop. While moving with my eyes closed and in contact with another person’s body, I noticed that my movement was being subtly adjusted by the other person’s movement and the surrounding environment.

    After this experience, I found myself questioning how sensation and movement are produced.

    MijiUnd, 2025, Video installation and participatory performance; single-channel video (edge-blended, two projectors), dyed wool screen, speakers, Dyed sheep’s wool screen, 813 x 240 cm, Photo by Son Saetbyeol

    How do you approach exhibiting your work? What are your goals when showing your art in public spaces?

    We are accustomed to understanding the world primarily through vision. I am interested in creating situations where this hierarchy of the senses is slightly unsettled.

    I think of exhibitions not as spaces to present completed works, but as situations that begin to operate when the viewer enters.

    In MijiUnd (2025), a continuously transforming digital body is projected onto a wool screen. The surface is punctured with small openings, through which viewers can insert their hands.

    When a hand passes through the screen, the physical body overlaps with the projected image, forming a shared visual scene.

    For those looking from inside the screen, a new image emerges where the physical body and the projection combine.

    Within the same situation, viewers occupy different positions. Some engage through their bodies, while others observe.

    I hope that within these situations, moments arise in which viewers perceive their own bodies in unfamiliar ways.

    Splint, 2024, VR performance, Approx. 18 min 

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

    Performance and installation practices involve structural challenges, particularly in terms of preservation and circulation. When a work does not result in a clearly defined object, it becomes difficult to collect or distribute.

    My work often takes place in exhibition contexts, which do not align easily with conventional systems of performance distribution. Although works can be reactivated, each iteration requires new conditions and resources, raising questions of sustainability.

    Technical considerations are also significant. Writing and negotiating technical riders—covering equipment, spatial arrangements, audience flow, and performer involvement—can be as complex as the work itself.

    In response, I have shifted my focus from how a work can be preserved to how it can be reactivated. I think of my works as structures that can be performed again under different conditions.

    Gesture Born Yesterday — Scroll and Heart, 2018, 3D printed PLA, 40 x 40 x 76 cm

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

    My recent work has been expanding toward recording moments of contact and returning those recordings to experience.

    In MijiUnd (2025), I explored a structure in which digital bodies and viewers’ bodies overlap within a shared perceptual field.

    Currently, I am working with 3D scanning and photogrammetry to capture moments where two bodies come into contact. In these scans, boundaries often blur or merge into a single form. I see these not as errors, but as traces left by contact.

    I am interested in how these traces might encounter the viewer’s body again, and I continue to explore where those boundaries begin and end.

    Text and photo courtesy of Bigo

    Website: https://bi-go.org/
    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/b_i_g_o_

  • Interview | Bangkok-Based Artist Sutiphong Sudsang

    Interview | Bangkok-Based Artist Sutiphong Sudsang

    Sutiphong Sudsang or Khet (1999, Thailand) is a contemporary artist who grew up in a Khmer ethnic family in Sisaket Province, Thailand. He currently lives and works in Bangkok. His practice is interdisciplinary, with a strong interest in experimenting with diverse artistic techniques and media, including sound, image, installation, and interactive media. Through these forms, he engages with historical, political, and structural power dynamics in society by exploring collective memory, belief systems, and the lived experiences of people in marginal spaces—particularly within the context of Thailand’s Northeastern region (Isan). 

    Sutiphong’s approach focuses on examining the relationship between individuals and historical traces that have been omitted from dominant historical narratives. He documents these traces through documentary photography and field recordings, which later inform the interpretation and production of his artistic works. 

    Selected works include Ties (2022), which received the Outstanding Award in Photography at the Young Thai Artist Award 2022, and Phi boon (2025), presented in the exhibition Merely Encountering the Evident at HOP – Hub of Photography, Bangkok. In addition, Sutiphong collaborates as part of an artist duo under the name “PLERN VERN,” focusing on sound-based and musical practices. Their works include Kwan Oei Kwan Maa (2025), presented at the 2nd Phimailongweek Art Festival, as well as ongoing live electronic music performances alongside their artistic practice.

    Installation View: PLERN VERN “Kwan Oei Kwan Maa”, 2025, Site-Specific Installation: Sculpture and Sound, Dimensions variable

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

    I was born into an ethnic Khmer family living near the lower northeastern border of Thailand, in Sisaket Province, which is often said to be one of the poorest provinces in the country. When I was young, I was raised by my grandparents because my parents had to leave home and work labor jobs in the capital city. By the time they came back to live in our hometown, I was already a teenager.

    As far as I can remember, I’ve loved art since I was a kid. Back then, my friends would always ask me to draw Japanese cartoon characters for them. Later, when I was in high school, I started playing music. I was really into the band Malihuana, and they became my biggest musical inspiration. Then I found out that Khai Malihuana, the singer of the band, had studied art at Silpakorn University. A lot of Thailand’s pioneering artists also graduated from there, since it was the first university in the country to offer art education. The moment I learned that, I didn’t hesitate at all—I knew I wanted to study there too.

    Later, I got into the Faculty of Painting, Sculpture and Graphic Arts at Silpakorn University for my bachelor’s degree. That was where I learned not only about making art, but also about life. At that time, I still didn’t really know what kind of art suited me best. I was in the middle of figuring myself out. I basically said yes to everything—any project, any opportunity, I would take it.

    Eventually, I realized that the things people asked me to do were often the things my classmates weren’t really doing, like lighting design, experimental music, photography, and so on. Most of the people around me were more focused on academic art practices. After doing those kinds of projects for a while, I started to feel pressure from my family, especially because graduation was getting close. The kind of art I was making wasn’t bringing in any income at all.

    With one year left before graduating, I decided to start submitting my work to competitions. That year, I entered two competitions—and I won awards from both of them. I was so happy. From that moment on, I never doubted my decision to study art. My path as an artist became clearer and clearer, and so many opportunities came from choosing this life in art.

    SA BAI DEE BOR, 2019, Acrylic, 300 x 100 cm, Nakorn Phathom, Thailand

    Many of your works explore historical traces and collective memory. How do you navigate the balance between documentation, interpretation, and artistic expression?

    That’s a really good question. For me, it’s about how you manage your artistic practice. I think that’s where the charm of art really lies—there’s no fixed formula. Every artist has their own way of doing things. It sounds like a simple answer, but it’s actually not easy.

    That’s why we often need a curator, or at least friends who truly understand us. I have one close friend that I hang out with all the time. We talk about both life and art. Sometimes I’ll ask him things like, “If I make work like this, how does it make you feel?” And sometimes friends can offer perspectives or ideas you’d never expect.

    For me, researching history, going into the field, and seeing things firsthand are all really important. But then you have to transform all of that into something new—an artwork. My process is to first let all the information out. And honestly, you don’t need to study everything, just enough to truly understand it. Then I take it back in, process it again, and finally release it as a work that presents only an emotional experience.

    When it comes to making art, you have to believe in what you’re doing and present it sincerely. To put it simply: you have to like your own work. That’s really it.

    Ties, Digital and Film Photography, 2022

    Can you describe how you approach experimentation in your work—how do new techniques or media emerge in your process?

    I usually start with a technical area that I’m interested in or something I feel like exploring at that time. For me, the techniques I’m into can shift depending on the period. For example, I used to be really into graffiti, so I looked for ideas or issues to express through that form. One of my works from that time is called SA BAI DEE BOR. I painted that phrase on the street—it’s in the Lao-Isan language and means “How are you?” I hoped that people who are familiar with the language, especially those who have moved away from home, might come across it and be reminded of their hometown, their language, and the place they left behind.

    When it comes to my process, I usually begin with a technique I want to try or learn first. Then, I experiment as much as I can whenever opportunities come up—whether it’s being invited to join an exhibition or applying for grants. Most of the time, there’s already a theme or a curatorial statement provided, so I start by interpreting that and gradually studying the context more deeply. From there, I gather ideas and material for the work, and then I combine them with the techniques I’m interested in.

    Actually, I was first drawn to photography. I used to take photos of my friends and the landscapes around my village near the border. But over time, I became more interested in exploring different techniques and new forms of expression. Because of that, I moved beyond just traditional painting or sculpture and started experimenting more with materials and processes.

    The stories from my hometown are very important in my work. In that area, there are traces of history and memories tied to the nation-state. So even though a landscape might look ordinary to others, for me it often brings up thoughts about past events that I’ve read about in history books. That curiosity eventually led me to develop my series Phi Boon (2025), which explores faith in religious figures known in Thai as Phu Mee Boon—people who claimed to be reincarnations of the Buddha.

    The project actually started from a landscape image of a small mountain in the middle of a community called Phu Fai. At first, I was simply impressed by the image itself. There’s a temple on top, but at the base there’s a stone quarry and an open space used for drying cassava, which smells quite strong.

    Then, that contrast made me start questioning things. It felt a bit contradictory. On one hand, the mountain plays an important role in the area’s development, but on the other hand, it creates dust and unpleasant smells. At the same time, there’s a temple sitting on top of it. So in a way, it becomes a place where faith and development coexist in the same space—which I found both curious and a bit ironic.

    Because of that, I started looking more seriously into the history of the temple. That’s when I found out that the area used to be connected to a rebel movement during the period when Siam was undergoing political reform. On top of the mountain, there’s also an old stupa that has partly deteriorated, but even now, people still place stones on its base to make wishes.

    This became the starting point for Phi Boon. Historically, these figures—Phu Mee Boon—gathered followers through religious teachings, telling people to worship stones and promising that one day those stones would turn into gold and silver. They also claimed that farmers wouldn’t need to work anymore, which eventually led to people abandoning their fields. As a result, they didn’t have enough rice or money to pay taxes, and this contributed to the formation of a rebellion.

    So this body of work explores traces of history and belief systems that still exist today. Even now, people continue to use stones to make wishes, hoping for a better life in some way. The works include Bondage (2025), made from ceramic glazed in silver and installed with steel, and Forming Creating Dissolving (2025), a ceramic piece made from laterite clay—the same material found in the stupa—stacked in layers to reflect the act of making wishes.

    At its core, my work is really about the border region where I come from. It contains fragments of history, and the way I present the work allows those fragments to connect with the present.

    In general, my practice keeps changing depending on what I’m interested in at the time. Sometimes it’s very simple—I just like trying new things. It’s not really about being trendy or futuristic, but more about exploring something I’ve never done before, like ceramics, painting on different materials, experimenting with film photography, or screen printing. I think I enjoy this process because making something by hand and seeing it come to life reflects effort and intention. In a way, it feels like constantly challenging myself.

    More recently, I’ve also become interested in new media, partly because I started making electronic music with a friend. That collaboration eventually developed into PLERN VERN, our artist duo focusing on sound art. My friend has a background in traditional Thai music, so he brings a strong understanding of cultural knowledge, while I’m more into new media and working with electronic devices. In a way, our practices naturally complement each other.

    Also, on a personal level, I feel connected to this direction. When I was a kid, I liked taking toys apart and modifying them. At the same time, my father is an electronics technician—he runs a small mobile phone repair shop—so I grew up around that kind of environment. Because of that, working with new media feels quite natural to me. Another thing is that this field keeps evolving, and it opens up endless possibilities for further development—although, if you really try to keep up with technology, it can get exhausting.

    Working as PLERN VERN has also given me more opportunities to experiment. For example, last year we were invited to present our work at the Phimai Long Week festival. Our piece, Kwan Oei Kwan Maa, came directly from this collaboration. We combined my friend’s musical knowledge with my background in visual art, blending the two equally.

    The result was a sound-based interactive installation in the National Museum. The work responds to the audience—when people walk through the space, sensors trigger sounds recorded from traditional Khmer wind instruments. Because of that, it connects really well with the ancient Khmer artifacts displayed in the museum.

    So in the end, the work talks about labor—both in the present and in the past—as well as movement and migration. It also reflects the journey of these artifacts, which have been brought from different places and are now preserved within the museum.

    Phi Boon: Dry Season, 2025, B&W print on stainless steel sheet, 74.93 x 43.1 cm

    What role do you believe art plays in social and cultural change? 

    I believe that when art is used in a creative way and when we truly recognize its value, it has the power to change society and culture for the better. As someone who works in art, I can clearly see that art can be a source of emotional support for people.

    Some artists might say, “Sure, that’s true for the audience or the viewer—but artists are the ones who have to carry all the exhaustion.” But I see it differently. For me, art is a craft. It takes time to grow, and one day it blooms and bears fruit.

    Even if you use AI, if you have the heart of a creator and you’re willing to spend time with it—if you find joy in the process each day—then art can still be a good companion. It helps build focus and wisdom. And for those who are truly passionate about it, art can offer hope.

    Bondage, 2025, Ceramic and metallic, 15 x 35 x 20 cm

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

    As an artist who grew up in Thailand and working in contemporary art or new media technique comes with its own challenges. In Thailand, this kind of work is not really part of the mainstream art market, and there are only a small number of collectors interested in it. Sometimes that can feel discouraging.

    But making art never disappeared from my life. I’ve continued applying for grants and funding opportunities to support my projects, which means I don’t always have to rely on my own money to keep creating.

    Another thing that has been incredibly important for me is community and networks. Having a network matters a lot when it comes to growing as an artist. Through that, I can also use my artistic skills to work on commissioned projects for others—most of the time with fellow artists in the same circle. That can mean helping with production for artist friends, DJing at social events, or being involved in other art and music-related work.

    Forming Creating Dissolving, 2025, Ceramic, 20 x 20 x 50 cm

    How do you manage feedback or criticism, especially in the context of public exhibitions?

    For me, it’s a chance to reflect on myself. In one sense, I see having a public exhibition as another important step forward. The direction of the exhibition, the feedback, the suggestions, and the criticism all matter a lot to me. Some advice has even changed my life—not in a bad way, but in a way that pushed me to stay committed to making art.

    Once the work is out in public, I think it’s up to the audience to interpret and judge it. As an artist, I’m open to listening to every opinion and criticism. But up to now, I’ve never regretted making the kind of art that comes from my own thoughts and intentions. To be honest, maybe I’m still a young artist too. I probably haven’t exhibited enough yet to face the really harsh criticism.

    Text and photo courtesy of Sutiphong Sudsang

    Website: https://sutiphongsuds.com/
    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sutiphong_ss/

  • Interview | Kyoto-Based Artist Fumika Tsuchitori

    Interview | Kyoto-Based Artist Fumika Tsuchitori

    Fumika Tsuchitori was born in Hyogo in 1995 and currently lives and works in Kyoto. Graduated from the department of art and craft at Kyoto University of Art and Design (currently Kyoto University of the Arts) in 2020. Through her two series of works, “I and You,” which depicts two people, and “a scene,” where elements such as colors and shapes are extracted from landscapes, Tsuchitori has created paintings and drawings by thinking about the irreplaceability of specific objects, as well as the relationship between people and individuals.

    Her recent exhibitions include Fumika Tsuchiotori, Hou Yijie “I Recognized Myself Through You” (2026, MANGROVEGALLERY, Shenzen, China), solo exhibition “Swaying Outlines” (2025, Gallery & Restaurant Butaiura, Tokyo), group exhibition “To Sway and Surround : Japanese Female Abstraction” (2025, Each Modern, Taipei, Taiwan), solo exhibition “Frames and Breath” (2024, MITSUKOSHI CONTEMPORARY GALLERY, Tokyo), solo exhibition “Drawings” (2024, WAITINGROOM, NADiff a/p/a/r/t, Gallery Room of BABY The Coffee Brew Club, Tokyo), group exhibition “Collectors III -Turning the World” (2024, Fukuoka Art Museum, Fukuoka), group exhibition “A Personal View of Japanese Contemporary Art: Takahashi Ryutaro Collection” (2024, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Tokyo), solo exhibition “Sleeping with me holding in my arms, Silence” (2023, WAITINGROOM, Tokyo).

    I and You (knock knock knock), 2020, Oil, acrylic and spray on canvas, 1280 x 2300 mm

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

    I was fascinated from an early age by anime and manga featuring young girls as the main characters, and I began drawing by following their example. At the art prep school I attended for my university entrance exams, I discovered the joy of observing objects placed before me and depicting not only them but the surrounding space as a whole. At university, through encounters with artist professors, senior students, friends, and exhibitions in various places, I learned the reality of continuing to live through making art, and I have been able to keep creating ever since.

    I and You (overlap), 2022, Oil and spray on canvas, 1620 x 1120 mm

    Who or what are your biggest influences, both artistically and personally?

    I have been most influenced by shōjo manga artists. I was deeply drawn to their exploration of personal narrative—questions such as where the self comes from, how it has come into being, and what kinds of surroundings have shaped it. I found myself captivated by both their methods and the depth of that inquiry. 

    I continue to reference the way their works pull the viewer into that depth: the richly decorative quality, the delicate yet dynamic linework, the rhythm between solid black areas and negative space, and the placement of color. As a child, I didn’t consciously notice it, but their works also contained references to painting, film, and music, which quietly created connections for me without my realizing it.

    Additionally, after reading Aoko Matsuda’s essay “Kanojo-tachi ni Mamorarete Kita” (“Protected by Those Women”), I realized how much “side stories” —short bonus manga included at the end of the volume or between pages—have influenced the way I live. These stories depict aspects of the characters’ lives outside the main story: how the characters approach their work, what they do in their daily lives, and how they balance work and life. Through these additional stories, I believe I learned ways of living both as an artist and an independent adult woman.

    I and You (Her devotion), 2023, Oil, acrylic and spray on canvas, 1455 x 2063 mm (set of 3)

    Your practice often explores intimate relationships. Can you talk about what interests you in this theme and how it guides your creative process?

    I think it is partly influenced by shōjo manga, but “intimate relationships” have been a recurring subject from classical painting through to the present. I feel that human desire—to seek someone else, or something beyond oneself—has not become obsolete. 

    At the same time, I experienced a significant shock when I realized that the message I had learned from fictional stories—that anyone can love anyone—has not been accepted in reality in the way those words suggest. There are people and things that are rendered invisible, and people who are simply “there” but never described beyond that fact. This continues to influence my themes and motifs to this day. I also think about intimacy as something that can sometimes form a closed relationship.

    When I encounter an image of two people embracing, or an object that embodies that kind of relationship, I sometimes feel a quiet sense of relief. There is a feeling of creating something myself and caring for myself through it—of constructing a space that feels safe. 

    Looking back, shōjo manga and online interactions have long functioned as a kind of hiding place for me, like a cave that protected me. I hope to create spaces—both on and off the screen—where “I” and “you” can come into being as such: not reduced to invisibility, and open to the possibility that anyone can love anyone.

    I and You (You gaze at me), 2024, Oil and spray on canvas, 1620 x 1300 mm

    How do your personal experiences or surroundings influence your choice of subjects or approach to abstraction?

    Recently, I have been re-affirming that personal experiences inevitably emerge in the way I draw things, even without intention. I find myself daydreaming: “Maybe this is my formative experience? Or perhaps this one?” I also find it interesting to imagine parallel versions of my life—how things might have turned out differently if even one small detail had been altered. I am gradually trying to examine whether these are merely fantasies, or whether they truly form the roots of who I am.

    Both the place where I was born and raised, and the area around my current studio, share a richness of nature. What I particularly like is that a large river flows nearby. I often go to its wild riverside (until a few years ago, there were even stray dogs living there), and through regaining a sense of light reflected on the water, its openness, and its vast scale, I feel as though I am returning to a starting point.

    I and You, 2023, Oil and spray on canvas panel, 652 x 455 mm

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

    There are many issues, forms of confusion, and internal divisions that I have not been able to resolve, but I always feel that there is something that resists articulation—something that cannot take shape in words. Creating—meaning not only painting itself, but also the small fragments of notes and traces surrounding the act of painting—feels like a way of standing in for things that cannot be expressed in language. I feel that these fragments, whether in the form of poetic gestures or as a way of preserving experience as it is, have helped me.

    Since childhood, I have been exposed to the internet, and I became fascinated by its speed—the way new things continuously appear as you scroll. But the more absorbed I became in that speed, the more I became aware of the weight of my own body. When I began drawing and painting, I feel as though I rediscovered my body—or rather, learned how to use it again in a new way.

    I and You (Who is drawing the line?), 2024, Oil, acrylic and spray on canvas, 910 x 1167 mm

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

    I’m planning to publish a book that brings together my works to date. I hope you’ll look forward to it!

    Text and photo courtesy of Fumika Tsuchitori

    Website: https://tsuchitori-fumika.com/
    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fmk____mm/

  • Interview | Seoul-Based Artist Hyewon Min

    Interview | Seoul-Based Artist Hyewon Min

    Hyewon Min (b. 1983) received her BFA in Korean Painting from Dongguk University and is based in Seoul, South Korea. Her work begins from fleeting emotional states—those that remain after a moment has passed, quietly settling beyond language. Using nature not as a subject but as a passage, she constructs inner landscapes shaped by memory, sensation, and a distinctly Korean sensibility.  She is currently preparing for a solo exhibition in the second half of 2026 and will participate in KIAF, Seoul, Korea, in September, as well as Breeze Art Fair 2026 (Dongduk Art Gallery, Seoul). 

    Her recent exhibitions include Art Busan (BEXCO, Busan, 2025), Open Storage (Gyeonggi Sangsang Campus, 2025), To Stay (Gallery Lull, Seoul, 2025), and Be My Santa Claus (Luan & Co. Gallery, Seoul, 2025). In 2024, she held a solo exhibition Time to Face Myself (ARTIAN SEOUL, Seoul) and participated in One’s Own Season (SPACE U, Seoul National University Bundang Hospital), THIRTY: Discovery of Seongnam (Cube Art Museum, Seongnam Arts Center), and Mental Landscape: Encounter with the Unknown (Vivian Choi Gallery, Seoul), as well as Art Gyeonggi Run Festival (Gallery KKI). Earlier exhibitions include Sweet Moon, What Kind of Moon (Daegu University Museum, 2023), Asian Contemporary Young Artists Exhibition (Sejong Center for the Performing Arts Museum, Seoul, 2023), and The Value (CICA Museum, 2023). She currently lives and works in Seoul.

    Prelude to Spring, 2026, Charcoal, gouache on linen, 65 x 65 cm

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

    There are emotions that resonate deeply in everyday life—the lingering feeling after finishing a book, a moment from a journey, or an object that holds a personal story. These moments are often small and easily overlooked, yet they remain with a certain clarity over time. Among countless experiences, I began working to hold onto those that feel particularly vivid, as a way of preserving something that would otherwise fade. Painting became a way to return to those moments, not as they were, but as they are felt.

    Early Chorus, 2026, Charcoal, gouache on linen, 100 x 55.5 cm

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

    My work is less about telling a story and more about creating a state where emotions can reside. I am interested in moments such as a way home, a place of rest, or fragments of memory—things that are sensed rather than clearly defined. 

    For me, landscape functions as a language. It is not something to be described, but something through which emotions are conveyed. Rather than approaching it through representation, I see it through a more conceptual and internal lens, allowing it to shift away from a fixed image. In doing so, the image becomes a space where viewers can encounter their own emotions and experiences.

     Winter goes, spring comes, 2026, Charcoal, gouache on linen, 70 x 32 cm

    Nature appears to be a central source of inspiration in your work. Can you talk about how your relationship with the natural world shapes your practice over time?

    Nature functions in my work not as a subject, but as a medium through which emotions are revealed. The texture of leaves, flowing lines, and diffused light stand in for states that are difficult to articulate. Instead of reproducing a specific landscape, I bring forward the air, warmth, and sensations I experienced within it, allowing them to take on a different form. 

    My way of seeing nature moves away from direct representation and leans toward a more conceptual mode of perception. What appears in the work is not the landscape itself, but something that has already passed through my inner world. In that sense, nature becomes inseparable from the emotional and psychological state that shapes it.

    Serenity, 2025, Charcoal, gouache on linen, 100 x 72 cm

    What is your creative process like? Do you follow a routine or work spontaneously?

    My process moves between structure and spontaneity. I usually begin with a loose framework, but the direction of the work shifts as I respond to the movement of color, material, and gesture. There are many moments where I follow the rhythm of the brush rather than control it, allowing the process to remain open. 

    Working within this uncertainty is important to me. Unexpected forms begin to emerge, and the work gradually develops by responding to these moments rather than imposing a fixed outcome. In this way, the painting arrives at a state that feels both intentional and discovered.

    The sound of the forest tunnel 2, 2024, Charcoal, gouache on linen, 136.8 x 101.0 cm 

    How do your personal experiences and identity influence your art?

    Rather than directly depicting personal narratives, I work with the residue of emotion that remains after an experience. Memories do not appear in their original form, but transform and settle into the work in different ways. Sometimes they become completely unfamiliar images. 

    At the core of my practice lies a distinctly Korean sensibility—an attention to stillness, resonance, and the space where emotion lingers. This sensibility shapes not only how I construct an image, but also how I approach time, space, and emptiness within the work. It becomes a quiet foundation that informs my artistic identity.

    The sound of the forest tunnel 1, 2024, Charcoal, gouache on linen, 136.8 x 101.0 cm

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

    Recently, I have been working in a more ambiguous state, moving closer to what I think of as the pure texture of emotion. By allowing uncertainty to remain within the process, the work develops in ways that I cannot fully predict. At a certain point, the painting seems to arrive at its own form. 

    Moving forward, I would like to continue working within this state of uncertainty, while expanding the way I construct space and image. By further dissolving the boundary between abstraction and figuration, I hope to create environments where emotions can quietly settle, much like a landscape that is not seen, but experienced.

    Text and photo courtesy of Hyewon Min

    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/minimin_painter/

  • Interview | Saitama-Based Artist Kiyo Hasegawa

    Interview | Saitama-Based Artist Kiyo Hasegawa

    Kiyo Hasegawa (b. 1984) is a contemporary Japanese painter whose practice is rooted in traditional Japanese painting (Nihonga), employing mineral pigments, metal leaf, and handmade paper within an abstract visual language. Working with these materials, she reduces visual elements to their essence, allowing marks and layers to emerge as traces of perception. Her work evokes a quiet, sublime presence and invites a contemplative encounter with what lies beyond words.

    She received her master’s degree from Tama Art University and has since developed a distinctive approach grounded in Japanese materials and sensibilities. Her work was included in Shin Japanese Painting: Revolutionary Nihonga at the Pola Museum of Art, and in 2023 she was selected for Harper’s BAZAAR’s Women on the Frontier. Represented by A Lighthouse called Kanata, she exhibits internationally at major art fairs including TEFAF Maastricht, Art Basel Hong Kong and Frieze Seoul. Her solo presentation was featured at Art Fair Tokyo 2025.

    l’effervescence III, 2022, Azurite, suihi pigments, gold leaf on Japanese paper, 145.5 x 45.5 cm (each), 4 panels

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

    I spent part of my childhood in Australia, which exposed me to both Western and Japanese cultures from an early age. After returning to Japan at the age of eight, I became aware of an atmosphere unique to this place, a subtle sense of awe that I could not fully explain. The air felt more saturated, as if something unseen was always present. It appeared in the density of certain spaces, in the weight of landscapes, and in quiet moments within everyday life. It gently pressed against perception. 

    Over time, this presence formed an internal image. It emerges through attentive observation and becomes clearer in moments of stillness. Painting is a way of approaching it.

    Installation view, 2025, A Lighthouse called Kanata

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

    At the heart of my work lies the question of how much of the world we can still receive before it is named or explained.

    I explore how a state of perception that has not yet crystallized into a fixed image can be held within painting. For me, painting creates the conditions through which this state can become perceptible. What begins in stillness is gradually tested and translated through the movement of the hand and the materiality of the medium. 

    Through this process, I hope to create a space where viewers may encounter the quiet, wordless presence.

    providence IV, 2023, Azurite, malachite, platinum leaf on Japanese paper, 150 x 57 cm (each), 4 panels

    Nature and spirituality are central to your practice. In what ways do you explore these themes in your paintings?

    Places such as shrines, temples, and certain landscapes carry an atmosphere that sharpens perception. For me, these are not subjects to be depicted, but conditions that allow a certain sensitivity to arise. What is already forming internally is brought into focus through these encounters. The work does not describe a scene but distills the essence of an encounter. In this sense, spirituality is sensed through the process rather than defined.

    l’effervescence XII, 2026, Azurite, cinnabar, suihi pigments, gold leaf on Japanese paper, 145.5 x 45.5 cm (each), 4 panels

    You work with traditional mineral pigments and handmade paper. How do these materials shape the meaning of your works?

    The materials are inseparable from the work. Mineral pigments, formed over long periods of time, carry a sense of duration that invites a certain reverence. At the same time, their behavior cannot be fully controlled, as humidity and environmental conditions influence their interaction with glue and paper.

    This responsiveness is essential to my process. It allows what I perceive to be carried into the work. The surface does not simply depict. It contains.

    illuminare II, 2025, Mineral pigments, gofun on Japanese paper, 162 x 130.3 cm

    What do you hope people take away from your art when they experience it?

    I hope that viewers can experience a moment in which perception slows and sharpens.

    In an increasingly accelerated world, the work may offer a moment to pause and reawaken awareness. I am interested in creating the conditions of sustained looking, where something not immediately visible begins to emerge. If the work can function as a place for quiet receptivity, then it has fulfilled its role.

    deliverance, 2021, Mineral pigments, pine soot, gofun on Japanese paper, 162 x 172 cm

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

    While consistently producing work for exhibitions and art fairs, I see my practice as an unfolding process. Looking ahead, I hope to extend painting beyond the frame, allowing the work to enter into a deeper dialogue with its surroundings. I am looking for ways to let the work breathe more deeply within its environment.

    Text and photo courtesy of Kiyo Hasegawa

    Website: https://kiyohasegawa.com/
    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kiyo_hasegawa/

  • Interview | Yamanashi-Based Artist Sakuho Ito

    Interview | Yamanashi-Based Artist Sakuho Ito

    Sakuho Ito (b. 1989, Hamada, Shimane, Japan) is a Japanese artist whose practice is rooted in faith, materiality, and the perception of the unseen. Working with washi, mineral pigments, soil, metal, and water, she creates abstract works that function not only as representations, but also as spaces of presence and prayer. Drawing from Shinto thought and embodied experience, her process emphasizes the emergence of form beyond intention through the relationship between body, material, and site. Her recent projects extend into site-specific works as ritual offerings and dedications, exploring new possibilities for abstraction grounded in spiritual and cultural contexts.

    Worship for Everyone – Sacred Silence, 2013, Kozo, iron sand, 100 × 400 cm

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

    I was born and raised in Japan, surrounded by a sense of spirituality that exists in everyday life without being clearly verbalized. From an early age, I spent time in nature and listened to what I perceived as its voice. While I have long engaged with traditional materials and handcraft, the foundation of my current practice lies in an awareness of the relationship between humans, nature, and that which cannot be seen.

    At first, I approached art as a form of expression. Gradually, however, it shifted into an act of engaging with the unseen. Through this process, I encountered materials such as washi and mineral pigments, and began to treat them not only as visual elements but as carriers of cultural and spiritual layers.

    Over time, this awareness came to be understood, for me, as a form of faith. At the same time, it reflects a personal desire to reconnect the relationship between humans and nature.

    My practice begins at the point where the act of making a work itself becomes a question of faith.

    A project to create a work dedicated to a shrine where Mount Fuji is revered as sacred.
    Main Sanctuary, Arakura Fuji Sengen Shrine, 2026. Photo by Shinya Kigure

    Your work is inspired by Shinto philosophy and Japanese spirituality. How do these ideas guide your creative decisions and your approach to materials?

    In Japan, the divine has traditionally been understood as something without form—unseen, and not meant to be seen. It is not something to be depicted, but something through which its presence is felt.

    From this perspective, any attempt to represent the divine inevitably leads to the decision not to depict it.

    My work is an abstraction that seeks to bring forth the presence of the divine without depicting it, by engaging with the unseen as it remains. In this sense, it is also intended to function as a space for prayer.

    This way of thinking directly shapes my relationship with materials. Washi, mineral pigments, metal, sand, and soil are not tools to construct an image, but mediums through which presence can appear. Rather than imposing form, I respond to their inherent properties—absorption, weight, and transformation.

    This approach shifts the focus from control to listening. Making is not about constructing an image, but about allowing something to emerge through the relationship between body, material, and site.

    Fuji: Worship of Life, 2025, Mt. Fuji lava (Suitengū), spring water (Fujisan Shimomiya Omuro Sengen Shrine), Kozo, Sekishu washi, iron sand, mineral pigments, suihi pigments, frame (yew), 151.2 x 117.7 cm.
    Dedicated on December 15, 2025. Photo by Shinya Kigure
     A climb to the summit of Mt. Fuji, undertaken as research for this work.
    Photo by Daiki Nishikawa

    How do the materials you work with—washi, metal, mineral pigments—inform or guide your creative process?

    The materials I work with are not passive. They are not used to construct an image, but to create conditions in which something can emerge beyond intention.

    Washi, mineral pigments, soil, metal, and water each have their own temporality and behavior. The act of working with washi is closely tied to the body—the fibers of kōzo, intertwined with my hands in water, create a sense of continuity between material and physical presence.

    Mineral pigments are closest to realizing my sense of color, while soil contains geological time and layers of cultural accumulation. Water moves between these elements, connecting and transforming their states, bringing them together before eventually disappearing. In this sense, water can be understood as something that overlaps with my own being.

    Metal, in my practice, is not only a structural element but also a conceptual and material presence. By incorporating iron sand or iron, and allowing subtle oxidation to occur, I introduce transformations that cannot be fully controlled. These processes bring a sense of earth and a perception of life and death into the work.

    At the final stage, I scatter water as a form of pigment. Rather than applying a predetermined image, I entrust the outcome to the movement of water and its interaction with other materials. The work emerges through the relationship between material conditions and bodily action beyond intention.

    This act is carried out as a sacred ritual, and deeply resonates with my approach to the abstraction of the divine.

    Mt. Fuji lava collected with permission from the relevant authorities.
    Water, used both as pigment and as a ritual element in the final stage of the work, is collected from a place connected to the land.

    How do personal memory and collective experience interact in your projects?

    My work begins with a personal memory from childhood, when I lay alone in the mountains and listened to the voice of nature. It spoke to me: “Humans are like water. Over the course of life, the water one is born with is refined, and eventually returned to its source.”

    Although I did not understand this at the time, the sensation has remained in my body. It is not a narrative memory, but a bodily one, where the boundary between myself and my surroundings felt unclear.

    In Japan, such a perception is not purely individual. The ability to sense presence in nature and to receive it rather than define it has been shared across cultural and historical contexts.

    For this reason, what begins as a personal memory gradually opens into something collective. It is not presented as a specific story, but as a condition or atmosphere that others can experience.

    My work does not aim to represent memory directly. Instead, I seek to create a state in which the viewer can enter a similar relationship—with the work, with space, and with something that cannot be fully seen. In this way, personal memory becomes a point of access to a shared perception.

    Worship of Death – A body that rusts and returns to decay / Within the irreversible time of oxidation, matter wavers / Where does the soul go?
    We return to the earth,     2016, Washi, Kozo, iron sand, iron powder, copper powder, kakishibu, 100 x 1000 x 1000 cm

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

    One of the major challenges has been how to present a sensibility and way of thinking deeply rooted in Japan without losing its essence within an international context.

    Concepts such as spirituality and Shinto can easily be simplified or misunderstood when taken out of context. For this reason, I have been exploring whether it is possible to convey the presence of the divine beyond language, without over-explaining these ideas, by remaining faithful to the process of making the work itself.

    At the same time, there were challenges in terms of materials and methods. While my early encounter with washi made the choice of support relatively clear, it took time to find materials that resonate with my bodily sense. I began by experimenting with Western materials, but eventually arrived at traditional Japanese pigments such as mineral pigments and suihi pigments.

    As a result of this process, I returned to the traditional washi technique of rakusui. Although it may now appear as a natural progression, it was the result of continuous trial and error.

    I believe that works grounded in material, action, and the presence of a specific place have the potential to communicate beyond language. Through this process, I have come to feel that sincerity in practice is what allows the work to move across cultural differences.

    Study for Fuji: Worship of Life, 2025, Mt. Fuji lava, Kozo, Sekishu washi, iron sand, mineral pigments, suihi pigments, 45 x 55 cm
    Photo by Shinya Kigure

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

    I am currently developing site-specific works in the form of ritual offerings and dedications. One of the starting points is a residency and dedication at a branch of Izumo Taisha in Hawai‘i, where I explore the relationship between place, material, and ritual.

    Through these projects, I am interested in expanding the act of making beyond exhibition, toward situations in which the work functions within the context of worship and dedication. This approach is not limited to a single location, but is gradually extending across different sites, both within Japan and internationally.

    At the same time, I am considering how such practices might open a different direction within the context of Japanese art. While its international recognition has often been shaped through flatness and image-based strategies, I am exploring another axis—one that emerges from abstraction grounded in Shinto thought and the perception of presence.

    Rather than presenting a fixed framework, I aim to develop this approach through specific sites, relationships, and acts, allowing it to take form over time.

    Text and photo courtesy of Sakuho Ito

    Website: https://sabiwashi.jp/
    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sakuho_art_activities/

  • Interview | Kanagawa-Based Artist Jun Homma

    Interview | Kanagawa-Based Artist Jun Homma

    Jun Homma (b. 1967, Tokyo) is an artist based in Kanagawa, Japan. He graduated from the Department of Three-Dimensional Design at Tama Art University in 1990. In 2019, he was a recipient of the Japanese Government Overseas Study Program for Artists and was based in Berlin.

    Since the 1990s, his practice has focused on sculpture and installation, with invisibility as its central axis. His works construct situations where relationships emerge, in which invisible elements shape perception, meaning, and the formation of images. Since around 2000, he has developed site-specific works and art projects that engage with the historical and social contexts of particular places. In these works, invisible elements embedded in various environments emerge in relation to the site. This practice has been developed through site-specific projects in contexts such as the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale, the Setouchi Triennale, and the Koganecho Bazaar. In recent years, his work has focused on the uncertainty of time and history through processes such as erosion, disappearance, and absence. As parts of landscapes or constructed forms recede from visibility, events emerge in fragments, and multiple temporalities intersect.

    Selected projects and exhibitions include Uncertain Stories (eitoeiko, Tokyo, 2025), Time and Boat (CPI, Chengdu, 2024), and the Koganecho Bazaar (Yokohama, 2024).

    Timeline, 2024, Installation view, Bicycle, wheels, stools, marble sculptures (Cycladic, Buddha), clay figurines (Haniwa), porcelain vases, horse figurines, cola bottles, terracotta, marble, plywood, 230 x 480 x 1340 cm. Photo: Yasuyuki Kasagi / Courtesy: Koganecho-Bazaar, Kanagawa, Japan

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

    Through my work, I explore the relationship between the “visible” and the “invisible” that shape our world.

    I grew up in the suburbs of Tokyo in the 1970s, a period often referred to as Japan’s era of rapid economic growth. The original landscape for me was one that continued to change through rapid urban development. Woods that had been my playground as a child were stripped away and turned into blank spaces of cleared land, like a void. Into those spaces, I projected my imagination, as if layering the landscapes that had already been lost. These experiences are connected to my practice.

    Since the 1990s, I have been working mainly with sculpture and installation, and gradually became interested in invisible elements such as time, memory, and history that lie behind materials and landscapes. I think of my work as an attempt to evoke and make perceptible those invisible elements through space and material.

    Room, 2025, Clock, Vacant Room, 16 x 28 x 3 cm. Courtesy: No. 97 West District International Art Community, Quanzhou, China

    Your work often reflects on landscapes, memory, and change. How have your early experiences of place shaped the way you think about your practice today?

    I think that landscapes are shaped by the people who have been involved with them, and that people, in turn, are shaped by the landscapes they have lived in and grown up with. However, this relationship is often not visible.

    For me, a landscape is not simply a visible surface, but something formed through the overlapping of time, memory, historical events, and social and economic forces. Having grown up watching landscapes change through urban development, I have a sense that landscapes are not fixed, but are constantly being rewritten and updated.

    For this reason, in my work, even when I work with materials or landscapes, I pay attention to the past time and background that they carry. For example, I place objects from different times and contexts and reconfigure their relationships so that they appear as if they exist along a single timeline, creating situations in which multiple times and histories intersect.

    Landscape Erosion – Tomioka, 2020, UV print on aluminum, photograph (Tomioka, Fukushima), 150 x 90 x 60 cm. Photo: Jun Homma 

    Your practice moves across sculpture, installation, video, and site-specific works. How do different contexts or environments shape the direction of a piece?

    I do not determine the form of my work in advance. Rather than fixing specific techniques or materials, I place importance on changing them according to the situation. When I create work for a specific site, I begin by researching invisible elements such as the history of the place, events that have happened there, and the memories accumulated in it. However, these elements do not necessarily appear directly in the work. Rather, I place importance on reinterpreting them and constructing the work through shifts and transformations.

    In my work, structures related to the invisible—such as assimilation, concealment, and absence—often appear. Through these structures, I aim to create situations in which invisible elements come into being within space.

    By placing objects from different times and contexts together, or by removing parts of images, I create situations in which multiple times intersect.

    Time and Boat, 2024, Installation view, Used wooden boats (5 boats), oars, stainless steel mirror. Courtesy: A4 Residency Art Center, Chengdu, China

    How has your artistic style evolved over time?

    I have been making works with themes of invisible elements and emptiness. In my earlier works, I was interested in elements such as blankness and absence, as well as in phenomena in which the work itself assimilates into its environment and its existence slips out of recognition.

    I was interested not only in things slipping away or becoming unrecognized, but also in how, through the uncertainty of perception, images whose meanings remain unfixed begin to emerge.

    In the spring of 2011, while I was performing a piece that assimilated into the landscape in a field of rapeseed flowers in the suburbs of Kanagawa, Japan (later developed into the video work Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter), the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident occurred following the Great East Japan Earthquake. Although the site of the accident was far away, there was a pastoral and beautiful landscape in front of me. At the same time, invisible radioactive substances might have been falling there. At that moment, I was confronted with fear and beauty coexisting, and I strongly recognized that the world is shaped by invisible elements. This experience became a major turning point in my awareness of the invisible.

    As I continued my work, it became clear that the problem of the invisible is not limited to visual phenomena, but is deeply connected to time, memory, history, and also to social structures, and time became a central theme of my practice.

    In my recent series Uncertain Stories, I explore situations in which multiple times and histories intersect by fragmenting and combining objects from different cultures and periods. In Now and Things, I attempt to make time itself present as material through processes in which everyday scenes and physical objects collapse, disappear, and emerge.

    These works are also influenced by the Zen concept of “sokkon” (the absolute now), which I encountered during the COVID-19 pandemic. We can only face things at a single point called “now,” but within that “now,” past and future are contained at the same time. Through the presentness of things and events, my work is also a practice of bringing forth the invisible structure of time itself.

    Uncertain Stories, 2025, Installation view, Artificial marble sculpture, stool, watering can, clay figurine (Haniwa), wheel, bucket, ceramics,
    reproduction painting, clocks, aluminum, plywood. Photo: Daisaku OOZU / Courtesy: eitoeiko, Tokyo, Japan

    What do you hope people take away from your art when they experience it?

    My work does not exist as something complete from the beginning, but establishes a situation in which it comes into being through the viewer’s perception and imagination. Fragmented objects and missing elements do not limit meaning, but rather become triggers that evoke multiple images and times.

    Through the work, multiple times overlap within a single moment called the present, and I intend to establish a situation in which that perception is not fixed, but constantly shifting and uncertain, comes into being.

    Uncertain Stories – Clocks, 2025, Clocks, plywood, 140 x 78 x 48 cm
    Photo: Daisaku OOZU / Courtesy: eitoeiko, Tokyo, Japan

    What advice would you give to emerging artists trying to establish themselves?

    It is very difficult for me to give advice, but I think what is important is to reconsider the kind of urgent expression I want to pursue within the broader context of the world, history, and society. This is not easy, but it also means continuing to question my own practice from the outside.

    This process is never stable, and at times I find myself at a loss. I am still in the middle of this inquiry.

    Text and photo courtesy of Jun Homma

    Website: https://junhomma.com/
    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jun.homma/

  • Interview | London-Based Artist Ziyao Lin

    Interview | London-Based Artist Ziyao Lin

    Ziyao Lin (b. 1999) is an artist and researcher working across installation, moving image, and AI-based artistic practice. Her work explores how technological systems can both alleviate and intensify the scarcities of contemporary life. Combining autoethnography with media experimentation, she is interested in what is missing, neglected, or emotionally impoverished in a world shaped by acceleration and technological abundance. Her work does not offer solutions, but asks: in a world rich in technology, what becomes scarce?

    Archive, 2023, Installation

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

    I am an artist and researcher whose practice spans installation art, moving image, and AI-based artistic practice. My work moves between artistic creation and critical inquiry. I see art as a way of thinking through the contradictions of lived experience: visibility and erasure, technological abundance and scarcity, narrative and silence, among others.

    I studied Digital Media Art at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in China for my undergraduate degree, and later completed a master’s degree in Digital Media at Goldsmiths, University of London in the UK. I am currently a PhD candidate working in the field of art and technology.

    Archive, 2023, Installation

    Who or what are your biggest influences, both artistically and personally?

    I think different artists and scholars have influenced me in different ways, to varying degrees. For me, it is not really a matter of having one single greatest influence. Rather, each person and each experience has its own distinct qualities and contributions. It is the accumulation of these different inspirations that has shaped who I am today.

    From some artists, I have learned from their formal approaches. From others, I have been influenced by their ideas and conceptual frameworks. From certain scholars, I have learned ways of thinking critically, while others have shown me particular angles from which to approach a problem. These influences are diverse and layered.

    On a personal level, lived experience has also had a profound impact on me. My background has made me especially sensitive to questions of scarcity, absence, and structural inequality. Personal experience often becomes an entry point through which I explore broader social and cultural contexts.

    Drifting Poetry, 2025, Installation

    Autoethnography plays a role in your practice. How does your personal experience become a site of research within your work?

    In my work, personal memories, emotions, and everyday experiences often serve as research material. They help me explore how larger structures are internalized and felt. This means that many of my artistic and research inquiries begin with myself. Sometimes, individual experience feels like a stone, and making art is like throwing that stone into the lake of society, creating ripples and generating resonances with others. It begins with the self, then extends outward toward relationships with others, with the world, and with society. It is a process of expansion from the inside out.

    What interests me is not self-expression for its own sake, but the way personal experience can reveal broader social conditions that are otherwise difficult to grasp. For me, autoethnography is one possible method of transforming lived experience into a critical perspective.

    One work in which I very explicitly adopted an autoethnographic methodology is Archive 2023. This project began with the idea of an AI archive, which I documented over the course of several months. I tried to present my daily conversations, practices, and life with ChatGPT through visually rich informational imagery. These fragmented records reveal both the possibilities and the potential problems of artificial intelligence. AI may appear to be a vast and coherent system of intelligence, yet it is manifested through the lives and experiences of countless separate and seemingly insignificant individuals.

    The archive intertwines memory and truth, blurs the boundary between the private and the public, and reflects on AI as one of the defining topics of 2023. It examines how AI gradually entered public visibility, began to shape people’s behavior, and raised questions about how human beings may coexist with AI technologies in the future.

    Drifting Poetry, 2025, Installation

    You describe your work as engaging with what is missing or emotionally impoverished. How do you approach and explore these forms of absence within your practice?

    I am often interested in what produces these forms of absence, or what causes our sense of impoverishment. In the process, I usually try to begin with something small, and then allow it to reflect a larger condition.

    For example, I have a work titled Drifting Poetry. It began with a long-term feeling of drifting in both life and society. I connected this feeling to a sense of groundlessness and rootlessness. Later, I created a two-meter installation using visual elements associated with floating as a metaphor, in order to express and respond poetically to this kind of directionless drifting.

    There is also an earlier work titled Love Letters Without the Recipient. It is a machine that generates love letters in vain, telling a story about how people project their emotions onto generative AI.

    What I often pursue is tension rather than resolution. I am drawn to what remains incomplete, damaged, or difficult to articulate, and I want to explore what this incompleteness can tell us about the world that produced it.

    Love Letters Without The Recipient, 2024, Installation

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

    I think the challenges I have faced as an artist have come from many different directions. Some involve how to balance the time and energy required for both practice and theory within research. Some are very practical, such as how to find a place for myself as an emerging artist. Then there are also more familiar questions: how to face failure, how to deal with rejection, how to live with self doubt, how to develop a visual language, and how to build a research framework.

    I would not say that I have fully overcome these challenges. Much of the time, I am simply trying to live and work alongside them. I have gradually come to accept that difficulty and challenge are inevitable parts of the process.

    Perhaps uncertainty and failure can themselves become meaningful conditions for both artistic practice and research.

    Love Letters Without The Recipient, 2024, Installation

    What role do you believe art plays in social and cultural change? 

    I do not believe that art, by itself, can directly or effectively change society. However, I do believe that art can change the ways people perceive, feel, and understand the conditions in which they live. It can make structures visible, and it can give form to what is usually overlooked, ignored, or left unnamed.

    For me, art matters because it can create disturbance and open up a space in which dominant narratives become less stable. It can slow down what has already been normalized, produce friction within systems of representation, and allow other kinds of experience to enter public visibility. This is especially important in an age when technological systems increasingly shape what people see, feel, and remember.

    The power of art lies in the fact that it not only depicts social issues, but also shapes the perspective through which we encounter them.

    Text and photo courtesy of Ziyao Lin

    Website: https://www.ziyaolin.net/
    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ziyao0/

  • Interview | Seoul-Based Artist Yang Seungwon

    Interview | Seoul-Based Artist Yang Seungwon

    Yang Seungwon (b.1984) utilizes digital images to produce pseudo-images that blur the boundaries between realities and fabrications and explores the possibility of expanding our epistemology as well as the domain of photography. He is working on fracturing the process of perception that we have faced of a certain situation or a landscape which is taken for granted, by revealing hidden parts of contemporary society. Furthermore, he captures the heterogeneity created by the interface between the real and the fictional or the difference in materiality seen in the gap between nature and imitation and also questions the decontextualized landscapes of reality that arise from a superficial understanding of region and place. Recently, he created landscapes of inexperience that everyone knows but has never seen in the process of visualizing experiences, memories and emotions, or has moved away from the flat and lightweight medium of photography to produce sculptural forms that are taken out of the frame like fragments of memory.

    He has held solo exhibitions including Suspended Boundaries (Museum Hanmi Samcheong Annex, Seoul, 2025), Overwrite (N/A, Seoul, 2022), Glimpse (Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, 2021), Covered Moment (HITE Collection, Seoul, 2019) and participated in various group exhibitions such as Shadow Index (PIPE Gallery, Seoul, 2025), The Observers Are Observed (CHEONGJU MUSEUM OF ART, Cheongju, 2024), The Hanging Gardens of Babylon (Nam-Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, 2023), A Glimpse of Our Time (Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul, 2023), Another letter to nature (Culture Station Seoul 284, Seoul, 2023), Psychedelic Nature (ART SPACE BOAN, Seoul, 2019), Summer Love (SongEun ArtSpace, Seoul, 2019). He was selected as a resident artist for the SeMA Nanji Residency (Seoul, 2024), MMCA Residency Goyang (Goyang, 2023), Seoul Art Space Geumcheon (Seoul, 2022), Asia Culture Center Asiaplex Studio (Gwangju, 2021), Gyeonggi Creation Center Residency (Ansan, 2017) and KʼARTS Residency (Seoul, 2016).

    Suspended Boundaries, 2025, Installation view, Museum Hanmi

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

    My artistic journey began with the profound shock I experienced when I first encountered Seoul in my late teens. The cityscape unfolding before me—particularly the repetitive forms of apartment complexes—felt strangely unfamiliar yet oddly familiar, a sensation I began to document through photography. After completing my undergraduate studies in photography and a Master of Fine Arts, I started to question the structure and production methods of images themselves more deeply.

    In the early stages, my work focused on directly recording urban and artificial environments with a camera. Since then, I have gradually transitioned toward synthesizing captured images with 3D renderings or generating digital imagery altogether. Currently, my practice centers on creating sculptural forms by printing images onto aluminum plates and manually bending or folding them. Rather than being fixed to a single method, my path has been a continuous exploration of how images are constructed, how they are transformed, and the specific materiality they inhabit.

    Overwrite, 2022

    You describe your work as creating “pseudo-images.” What does this term mean within your practice, and what possibilities does it open up?

    The term pseudo-images refer to a state that has departed from the traditional expectation that an image must refer to or record something specific. In my work, an image is neither a photograph that captures reality as it is, nor a purely computer-generated virtual image. Instead, captured scenes and 3D-rendered elements coexist within a single frame, creating a state where the viewer cannot easily discern which part is real.

    What matters here is not the act of blending itself, but the sensation that arises at the moment those boundaries blur. I am interested in the point where the habitual judgments we make when looking at images—the judgment that “this is real” or “this is fabricated”—are suspended; a sensory state that exists prior to such judgment. It is in this same context that I borrow the concept of epoché to describe this state. To place judgment in brackets, even for a moment—that is how my images function.

    The act of bending aluminum plates also exists within this context. When a flat, printed image is transformed into a three-dimensional form, it appears differently depending on the viewing angle and the light. The image is no longer a fixed record but becomes something that constantly shifts into different states through its relationship with space and the body. The term pseudo-images points to that unstable and fluid state—a realm of undetermined possibilities.

    Suspended Boundaries, 2025, Installation view, Museum Hanmi

    Your work often challenges habitual ways of seeing. How do you think about disrupting the viewer’s process of perception?

    I interpret the expression “disturbance” slightly differently. Rather than aiming to confuse the viewer, my goal is more about momentarily pausing the system of judgment that we unconsciously activate when confronting an image. The moment we see an image, we categorize it almost automatically: whether it is a photograph or a painting, reality or fiction, or where it was taken. The moment that categorization is complete, the image becomes something already familiar.

    In my work, I attempt to create a situation where such categorization cannot be easily finalized. Captured reality and rendered elements are intertwined, and as flat images are placed upon bent aluminum, the very shape of the image changes depending on the viewing angle. This creates a situation where the viewer has no choice but to engage with the image by moving their own body. In this process, I hope for an experience to occur—one of “sensing” the image rather than merely “reading” it.

    This is why I am interested in that brief moment when judgment is suspended—the moment when one feels how an image exists before questioning what it means.

    Suspended Boundaries, 2025, Installation view, Museum Hanmi

    How do you stay inspired and motivated to create new work?

    The word “inspiration” often sounds as if something suddenly arrives out of nowhere. In my case, however, it is more often that a specific sensation or question lingers in my mind for a long time before eventually leading to a work. Having lived with long-standing questions about the nature of memory—specifically, how certain experiences transform over time—I felt that “water” was a material whose form was perfectly suited to contain those inquiries. Water is never fixed; it permeates, evaporates, and even leaves deposits. In this sense, it closely resembles the way memory functions.

    Regarding how I maintain my motivation, to be honest, I believe it is the questions surrounding the work rather than the work itself that keep me engaged. Whenever I think I have found an answer, a new question arises, and that question leads to the next piece. Even now, I am constantly navigating the spaces between image and materiality, flatness and dimensionality, and record and transformation. The fact that the tension between these elements remains unresolved seems to be the very force that keeps me moving forward in my practice.

    Shadow Index, 2025, PIPE Gallery

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

    My most enduring challenge was the anxiety surrounding the shifts in my artistic methodology. As I moved from direct camera captures to 3D rendering, and then further toward sculptural forms with tangible materiality, I constantly asked myself: “Is this still my work?” Especially coming from a background trained in photography, the question of whether generating images via computer or manually bending aluminum plates still fell within the realm of photography remained a source of persistent discomfort.

    Ultimately, what resolved this unease was not any external standard, but the realization that a consistent set of inquiries flows through my work. While the tools and methods may change, my interest in how images are constructed, how they are transformed, and the specific materiality they inhabit has remained constant from the very beginning. Recognizing this continuity for myself marked a significant turning point.

    Covered Moment, 2019, HITE Collection

    What advice would you give to emerging artists trying to establish themselves?

    I believe it is crucial to identify, as early as possible, the recurring questions within one’s own work. Ultimately, knowing what you are constantly asking provides a sense of direction for your practice—more so than the specific materials you use or the forms you create. The clearer those questions are, the less you will waver, even when your tools or methods change.

    Text and photo courtesy of Yang Seungwon

    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iso_yg/