JeeMin Kim
JeeMin Kim’s practice begins with a longing for ancient civilizations she has never experienced. Through her work, she traces the origins of this peculiar feeling—the nostalgia for a vanished world she has never visited, never inhabited, and yet somehow misses. Having grown up in the United Kingdom, the artist developed a deep affinity for the archaeological gaze through which Western civilization has approached the past, while simultaneously feeling uneasy about the violence and objectification that often accompanied it. Occupying a position that is neither that of the colonizer nor the colonized, she quietly joins the journey of lost civilizations.
No. 138, 2025, Ink, acrylic, and gold leaf on canvas, 100M
No. 139, 2025, Ink, acrylic, and gold leaf on canvas, 100P
No. 143, 2025, Ink, acrylic, and gold leaf on canvas, 100M
No. 144, 2025, Ink, acrylic, and gold leaf on canvas, 100P
No. 148, 2025, Ink, acrylic, and gold leaf on canvas, 162.2 × 30 cm
No. 149, 2025, Ink, acrylic, and gold leaf on canvas, 162.2 × 30 cm
No. 150, 2025, Ink, acrylic, and gold leaf on canvas, 162.2 × 30 cm
No. 151, 2025, Ink, acrylic, and gold leaf on canvas, 162.2 × 30 cm
No. 152, 2025, Ink, acrylic, and gold leaf on canvas, 162.2 × 30 cm
No. 153, 2025, Ink, acrylic, and gold leaf on canvas, 50P
No. 154, 2025, Ink, acrylic, and gold leaf on canvas, 100M
No. 155, 2025, Ink, acrylic, and gold leaf on canvas, 100P
The twelve works that comprise the Prototype Temple series depict a stateless space that belongs to no single era or culture. Layered across the canvas, ink and gold leaf become a silent language inherited from ancient civilizations. Echoing the phrase “Silence is golden,” a saying shared across cultures, the ink settles into the depths of the surface while the gold leaf lingers above it. Each composition holds together the splendor and disappearance of what remains unsaid, of what has already vanished. As if rowing toward an island and slowly stepping into its landscape, viewers find themselves immersed in the temporal textures the artist unfolds before them, wandering through a world suspended between memory, imagination, and history.
