Tell a little bit about how you first got into creating art.
My first interest in art is natural and innate. I was born into the Lee family, where my aunts on my mother's side all have their own styles of fashion, cooking, and artistic tastes. My mother was a textile design professor after graduating from Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul with both her undergraduate and master’s degrees in design. My sister was also very talented in art, having taken an AP art class at Trinity College School. This led her to work as a fashion designer in the global fashion district in New York City after she graduated with a BFA in fashion from Parsons School of Design in New York City. My mother’s love of art and design exposed her children to art from a young age. She encouraged my Lego creations as a baby and took us to galleries in Seoul, Korea, including a special Picasso exhibition. She recommended novels from around the world, including Korean and Western classics with great illustrations. Her artistic support of her children was exceptional. Her work in textile art and design, including her personally designed fashionable ties exhibited at the Seoul Arts Center in Korea, shows that artistic talent and visual sense run in our blood.
If my art is original, then the threads woven into the So Youn Kim fabric represent the sequential, spatial, abstract, and tangible memories and influences I learned from each artist
What artists or movements have had an impact on you?
I would like to acknowledge the impact that each artist has had on me, similar to the way threads are woven together to make fabric. If my art is original, then the threads woven into the So Youn Kim fabric represent the sequential, spatial, abstract, and tangible memories and influences I learned from each artist. For example, Picasso was one of the first figures in my youth when I visited his special exhibition in Korea. I was grounded by an exceptional memory and visual shock from his exceptional compositions, figures, shapes, and visual representations with colors. After a happy childhood of making art, I took an AP art class at Trinity College School in Canada.
I studied Matisse's seated figures on my own time. I got 5 in my AP art class in my grade 11 and grade 12 was relaxing mode and time. Having relocated to Ottawa where I obtained an MA degree from Norman Paterson School of International Affairs for my job, I restarted my art practices in my on-site time in remote work environment. The collection of artwork was submitted for making its meaning to several galleries and Montreal’s renowned gallery on Sherbrooke Street, Gallery Gora accepted me to have a solo exhibition. Since 2022 solo exhibition where I also did videography for my parents and families and friends to watch my exhibition from overseas and long distance, I continued making artwork including exhibition preparation time in studio class in Ottawa with canvas as mediums, where I was exposed to incredible self-taught street artist Basquiat’s visually strong colors and figures. Slowly, I started to exhibit my art in Venice Italy, which I described as a turning point in my life to be a cosmopolitan artist with ITSLIQUID GROUP and consequences, London UK, Matera Italy with academic curator Dr. Carmela Loiacono, Paris France, Barcelona Spain, Tokyo Japan and Seoul Korea up to now.
What is your source of inspiration?
My source of inspiration is intellect curiosity; my fond of reading classics since I was very young in my youth as into literature of world classics and Korean and western contemporary books. My favorite that I recall is Bernard Werber’s Encyclopedia of Relative and Absolute Knowledge, which made me understand the genealogy of knowledge and context for my interest, which is beginning of my passion for research for collecting and analyzing and synthesizing information and knowledge with my original thinking and ideas. Currently, often non-fiction books due to my academic discipline in international affairs and social science all infuse me into academic research and reading as source of inspiration and stimulation. Even writing the philosophical texts myself brings me to a joy of appreciating the genealogy of intellectual histories and contexts; I also enjoy listening to various music of different genres depending on how I feel; this ranges from classical music such Schubert, to Brazilian bosa nova, which is my favorite, hip-hop, city pop, and temporal stage of 90s, 80s, 70s, etc. Also movies are great inspiration too, such as Woody Allen, Wang Kar-wai, Hong Sang Soo, Stanely Kubrick, Alfonso Quaron. For other movies, I like Matrix especially series 2 with fantastic scenes, Blade Runner both new and old ones, esp. liked new one’s soundtrack. Today I listened to Bakerman’s Laid back. My current favorites are: Paula Moore’s Valparaiso, and Pino D’Angio’s Ma quale idea and Okay Okay at this moment; I even put them in my pinned posts on Instagram.
What themes does your work involve?
My academic discipline is international affairs; when I become creative in my academic discipline, I can suggest innovative ideas to make it more interesting; so I designate international affairs as cultural affairs and later making connotation of international affairs to the advanced form, which I say as cosmopolitan affairs. Taking cosmopolitan lenses drawing from my understanding of the world with relationships, subjects, objects, norms, policy, actors, trends, and other various components that shape the world spatially and temporarily with different scales and contexts, this is interesting to take such perspective to draw inspiration and also provide descriptions of the artwork I created. The visualization of cosmopolitan affairs is a nouvelle perspective as well as “raison-etre” in addition to be “savoir-faire” in my art philosophy and practice.
