Jihyoung Han (b. 1994) explores real-world issues by amplifying them into extreme dystopian futures while simultaneously infusing her work with a playful imagination. Her paintings depict apocalyptic scenes that exaggerate and distort pressing societal challenges—such as the rapid advancement of technology, the unchecked expansion of capitalism, and the fragmentation of human identity. However, rather than signaling the ultimate end, her works unfold as spaces where new orders and connections can be imagined through processes of dismantling and destruction.

Jihyoung Han’s early series, ‘Biodegradable Land’ (2020), reflects her experiences of living in various countries, including the Czech Republic, Japan, and South Korea. She recalls how, in the process of adapting to the diverse customs, traditions, linguistic nuances, and gestures of each place, she herself felt as though she was being rebooted into different settings. 
 
This experience—of being both human and Korean, yet constantly redefined by external environments—led her to imagine the outer shell of identity as something shaped by an inherent yet mutable nature. The ‘Biodegradable Land’ series explores this theme by depicting new bodies that emerge through decomposition, disassembly, and rebirth.

These abstract bodies break away from rigid surfaces, embracing fluidity and mutability while holding the potential for new connections. Jihyoung Han envisions a community as a single living organism, where individual entities coexist, adjust, and interact. Through her abstract compositions, she seeks to depict a small collective—a village—where multiple beings come together, forming a dynamic and ever-evolving ecosystem.

One of the key themes in Jihyoung Han’s work is "corporeality." She questions the human body as a socially constructed and representational model, seeking to redefine its concept. To her, the body is both the volume of sensed activity and the site of events. Her work interrogates the fate of the collective "we," where individual bodies come together to form the human species. 
 
To explore this, Han focuses on various representations of humanity: new realms shaped by the digital environment, individuals striving to transcend their identities, and those who evolve themselves into mutant-like beings.

In her 2021 solo exhibition, 《identi-kit: The people’s choices》, held at N/A, Jihyoung Han redefined the concept of the human body while introducing the notion of the non-human as an entity beyond human intelligence. Han envisioned the exhibition space as a corporation that creates new species, departing from anthropocentric thought patterns and images shaped by molecular biology, neural structures, embryonic regeneration, and genetic engineering.

Here, humans exist as one of the coexisting beings within the ecosystem, where the self is formed not through singular existence but through a connection with a community composed of multiple entities. Within this social network framework, an individual’s image is refracted, reflected, and continuously transformed through interactions with various objects, events, and experiences. In this process, all human-defined physical attributes are systematically erased, leaving only abstract forms behind.
 
By stripping away the outer boundary that defines an individual, Han’s work questions identity as something collectively shaped—where the body becomes the site of events, binding individuals into a collective “we.” As our understanding of the self is constantly expanded by technology, environment, and shifting boundaries, Han’s vision of corporeality invites us to imagine new possibilities for the body in an evolving world.

Jihyoung Han’s paintings can be seen as an attempt to recontextualize the contemporary era, where an overwhelming flow of information and images intersect, expand, and fragment at random. Her work freezes abstracted cross-sections of society, while simultaneously introducing beings that move toward an impending future.
 
These figures exist in a state beyond all dichotomies, including the distinction between subject and object, becoming infinitely adaptable entities shaped by their environment. The canvas, envisioned as a shared space of coexistence, hints at the boundless possibilities embedded within a future yet to unfold.

Jihyoung Han utilizes the digital toolbox provided by contemporary technology, editing and collaging her own photographs alongside text and images collected from the internet. She then translates these compositions onto canvas using an airbrush, a technique that lends her works a soft, ethereal quality, blurring the line between reality and fantasy while transcending the constraints of the physical world. 
 
Through this process, dissolved boundaries and a dispersed focus challenge the viewer’s fixed perception of reality, inviting them to envision a world that is fluid, ever-reconfigurable, and open to endless reinterpretation.

In her 2023 solo exhibition 《Them so good》 at Byfoundry, Jihyoung Han presented surreal images and virtual communities that emerged from ideals surrounding youth and gender identity. The artist explored beings created from underground culture and the archetype of social outsiders, curating the exhibition in the form of a showroom for a future pet shop.
 
The artist displayed portraits of furries—hybrid beings representing companions or virtual selves—within this space, offering a multi-dimensional and trans-dimensional experience beyond ideology and new forms of life. In doing so, she invited viewers to imagine "the possible-but-not-real."

The displayed furry portraits have muted tones with blurry contours and a lost focus, causing the identity of the furry in the portrait to appear ambiguous. These faint identities come across as boundary beings, with a mix of animal and human forms, making it difficult to determine their gender or age.
 
Much like the disassembled and fused bodies in her previous works, these characters occupy the canvas as protagonists with unfamiliar bodies that are hard to recognize through human intellect. The artist describes them as "bodies that resist becoming specific pronouns," referring to them as "rejecting bodies."

Rave quotes and wisdom (2023) and Egos slide into one another (2023) explore the concept of "anamorphic" transformation, such as disguise or metamorphosis, through the depiction of female body imagery. In these works, transformation or metamorphosis goes beyond a simple expression of desire, incorporating human will and desire that lead the distortion, acting as forms of critique and resistance.
 
This will toward mutation becomes a challenge that reevaluates corporeality and emphasizes the complex relationship between bodily aesthetics and the politics and ethics embedded within them. In this way, Han portrays these beings with unclear identities in a world that is ostensibly "normal," allowing them to break free from existing systems and modes of thought.

In her solo exhibition 《Lavish Bone》 (2024) at Jason Haam, Han presented landscapes of the future imagined for the year 2100. The works showcased in the exhibition depict future landscapes in a dystopian manner, similar to the images of disaster and ruin commonly seen in movies and games that anticipate the future.
 
The artist's dystopian imagination stems from the generation and societal atmosphere she belongs to. As a member of the digital generation, Jihyoung Han has cultivated her taste within the environment of popular culture, while critically observing the contemporary world where war and entertainment coexist.
 
Her works convey the grim foreboding of an expanded future where the violent nature of human existence and social resistance to it are deepened. This atmosphere is expressed through the frequent appearance of twisted or transformed bodies, ambiguous backgrounds, and heavy, unreal colors.

The bodies appearing in 《Lavish Bone》 are depicted as spaces where power dynamics of society are interwoven. Han suggests that frequent body transformations, as a means of revealing vested interest or power dynamics, will be a defining feature of future landscapes. In her paintings, the transformed bodies are depicted with elements of animals integrated into the human form, with the animal imagery referencing characters rooted in contemporary commercial capitalism.
 
The depiction of such characters replacing faces evokes avatars or memes used by a generation for whom revealing their true identity feels awkward. This reflects the societal atmosphere that hints at the future landscapes she envisions.

In this way, the future imagined by Jihyoung Han is drawn as an extension of the current experiential environment. The dystopian signs she perceives for the future can be found in the distorted body images and divisions led by global platforms of massive capital that dominate today’s daily life.
 
However, while Han depicts a future akin to ruins, she introduces images that transcend all boundaries and move toward connection, leaving behind a sense of optimism. Her work serves as a philosophical and aesthetic experiment that seeks new possibilities for the future, beyond the limitations of reality.

"If my painting is a space thinly veiled, I hope that viewers will look into the possibilities unfolding in the transitional state of existence and identity as they cross the threshold. I paint with the desire that the will and consciousness of humanity, positioned between the inner and outer, concealment and revelation, may dwell in the images I create." (Jihyoung Han, from BE(ATTITUDE) interview)

Jihyoung Han holds a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts at Korea National University of Arts and a Master of Fine Arts with a focus on painting and media from the same institution. She held her solo exhibitions at Gallery 175 (Seoul, 2020), N/A (Seoul, 2021), DrawingRoom (Seoul, 2022), Byfoundry (Seoul, 2023), and Jasaon Haam (Seoul, 20224).
 
Recent group exhibitions in which Han has participated include 《Karma II》 (Ground Floor, 9 Cork Street, London, 2025), 《Condo London 2025》 (Carlos/Ishikawa Gallery, London, 2025), 《At the end of the world split endlessly》 (Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, 2024), 《Ghost out of the machine》 (Incheon International Airport, Incheon, 2024), 《BOLMETEUS》 (SAI Gallery, Tokyo, 2024), 《K90-99》 (LUPO Gallery, Milan, 2023), and more.
 
Having actively presented her works on international stages, including in Seoul, Tokyo, New York, and Milan, Jihyoung Han was awarded the Chongkundang (CKD) Yesuljisang Award in 2023.

References

• 한지형, Jihyoung Han (Artist Website)
• 제이슨함, 한지형 (Jason Haam, Jihyoung Han)
• 올댓아트, [라이징 스타: 미술가 한지형] “안정적 미래보다 가슴 뛰게 만드는 꿈을 선택하는 사람이고 싶습니다”, 2021.09.24
• 비애티튜드, 창작이라는 특권의 의무 – 한지형
• 다노마드, 한지형 작가 개인전 “identi-kit : The people’s choices”
• 드로잉룸, Fatty Folders (DrawingRoom, Fatty Folders)
• 파운드리 서울, Them so good (Foundry Seoul, Them so good)