GaHee Park (b. 1985) explores socially taboo or forbidden themes related to sexuality, nudity, and the female body through her own unique perspective in painting. In her works, these subjects are depicted as intimate scenes from everyday life. The figures in her paintings, often portrayed in the nude, engage in private acts between lovers, yet they appear completely unbothered by the gaze of others, freely enjoying their daily moments. 

The secretive and private scenes in Park’s paintings and drawings create a sense of discord, as disparate elements intertwine or appear in distorted forms, unsettling the viewer’s perception and stimulating the imagination.

As a child, GaHee Park grew up in a religious and strict household within a society that enforced conformity. These early experiences instilled feelings of guilt and shame regarding sexual expression. However, after leaving Korean society and settling in the unfamiliar environment of the United States, she began to break free from the constraints that had once confined her. 

During her time in college in the U.S., she was deeply influenced by the freedom of self-expression among women and feminism, both of which became fundamental to her artistic practice. Later, at the Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, Park expanded her exploration of the female body, incorporating it more freely into her work.

Drawing from her experiences growing up in a conservative and oppressive environment, Park’s early works reveal a more direct exploration of erotic elements. Her work serves as both a form of self-expression regarding repressed sexuality and a commentary on the power dynamics intertwined with it. 

A notable example is her 2016 series ‘Butt on Face’ (2016), which depicts a scene where a naked butt presses down on a woman's face. The sexual act portrayed in this work is presented through an asymmetrical and hierarchical power structure.

‘Butt on Face’ explores the inherent power dynamics tied to sexuality in a bizarre and somewhat humorous manner. Rather than presenting eroticism purely as something sensual, the work satirizes the power structures embedded within it, ultimately taking an anti-pornographic approach.

Alongside this, GaHee Park has also created works that address the male-centered gaze imposed on the female body. This theme originates from her experience of viewing Paul Gauguin’s nude paintings of young Indigenous girls in Tahiti. Through these images, she recognized how the female body was othered by the gaze of a white male artist and drew parallels to the sexism and racism she had experienced as an Asian woman in Western society. In response, Park sought to depict the female body in her own visual language as a non-Western woman.

When depicting the female nude, GaHee Park chooses to move beyond societal taboos and instead focus on the pure joy of women—particularly their sexual pleasure. She seeks to dismantle both the notion of taboo and the objectification of the female body, bringing to light desires that have long been hidden or suppressed. 

In her work, the female nude is portrayed as an active subject, engaging in intimate moments with a loved one in private, everyday spaces—completely unbothered by the gaze of others. Unlike in traditional art history, where the female body has often been rendered as a passive object of sexual desire, Park’s women appear relaxed and free, embracing their lovers, lounging, or sharing a meal, naturally immersed in their daily lives.

While based in New York, GaHee Park held her first solo exhibition in Korea, 《We Used to Be Fish》, at Perrotin Seoul in 2019. The works featured in this exhibition explored women's desires in everyday life, blending the artist’s personal experiences with imagination. 

Her paintings evoke a surreal quality, as if shifting between dreams and reality. Elements within the compositions often appear slightly misaligned, like puzzle pieces that don’t quite fit, or they intertwine multiple times and spaces simultaneously, stimulating the viewer’s senses.

These images emerge as Park translates her imagination and fragments of everyday observations into visual form. For example, her painting We Used to Be Fish (2019), which also served as the exhibition’s title, was inspired by a memory of reading a piece of fake news online claiming that humans were originally fish based on fossil research. 

While recounting this story to her husband, Park was unable to find the original article and instead began to speculate and imagine its contents as she explained it. That night, she dreamt of herself inside a fish tank, her body distorted by the glass. Fascinated by this surreal image, she used it as the basis for the painting.

In this way, the artist combines everyday experiences and imagination related to the body to create images, often intertwined with the anti-pornographic approach seen in her earlier works. 

Her paintings frequently feature women with exaggerated body parts, such as lips and fingers resembling spider legs. For instance, one striking image shows a grotesque hand with long, painted nails grasping a genital area beneath a table, or feeding a cat.

The artist explains that through the somewhat grotesque hand, she aims to challenge the stereotype that "Asian women are quiet and submissive." She wanted to convey that women, too, possess the strength to reach out and grasp what they desire, defying the limitations imposed by such prejudices.

In this way, GaHee Park doesn't directly expose taboo topics like female desire but instead reveals them in a more everyday, indirect manner. The ambiguity created by these elements plays a crucial role in her work. She describes her approach as one that combines a search for beauty with a need to probe ‘the things we don’t talk about’.

In her recent works, fragmented time and space, along with the body, appear only in parts. Park suggests that for the meaningful liberation of "civilized" pleasure and restraint, a willful subversion of social norms and taboos is often necessary. This process manifests in her work through unnatural compositions and physical distortions of the body.

In this way, GaHee Park redefines what has long been considered taboo, particularly female desire, by expressing it freely within the most everyday and private spaces, turning it into a natural instinct and a part of daily life. For the artist, who grew up in a strict Catholic household, painting becomes a form of personal catharsis and a space for exploring and expressing an idealized eroticism that is free from the gaze or desires of male.

"Expressing women's pleasure, especially sexual joy, was long seen as taboo, but I made the decision to break that history and now express it. In New York, where I live, and in the global art world, there’s a trend and movement to dismantle those taboos and objectification, and we are right in the middle of it." (GaHee Park, Elle interview, December 19, 2019)

GaHee Park earned her BFA in Painting from the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia and her MFA in Painting from Hunter College in New York. She is represented by Perrotin, with solo exhibitions at Perrotin’s New York (2024, 2020), Tokyo (2023), Paris (2021), and Seoul (2019) locations. She has also held solo exhibitions at Taymour Grahne in London (2018), Motel in Brooklyn (2017), 2nd Floor Gallery in Brooklyn (2016), and Marginal Utility Gallery in Philadelphia (2015).

Park has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including 《From the Collection》 (Nassima Landau, Tel Aviv, Israel, 2025), 《The Imaginary Made Real》 (Berry Campbell, New York, 2023), 《Beyond Identity》 (Jessica Silverman, San Francisco, 2022), 《No Patience for Monuments》 (Perrotin, Seoul, 2019), and 《Cheeky: Summer Butts》 (Marinaro Gallery, New York, 2018).

Her works are housed in collections such as The Pond Society (Shanghai, China), Columbus Museum of Art (Ohio, USA), and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (Miami, USA). In addition, Park will participate in a public art project at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport's Terminal 6, scheduled for completion in 2026.

References

• 페로탕, 박가희 (Perrotin, GaHee Park)
• 페로탕, We Used to be Fish (Perrotin, We Used to be Fish)
• 아트인컬처, 에로티시즘의 원더랜드
• Mutual Art, GaHee Park: Butt on Face 
• 엘르, 뉴욕에서 활동하는 한국인 아티스트 박가희, 2019.12.19
• 라켓레터, [라켓레터] 만나본 작가 : 박가희 “Eveningness”, 2023.02.08
• 페로탕, Fun and Games (Perrotin, Fun and Games)