Keem Jiyoung (b. 1987) pays attention to the structural problems behind seemingly accidental disasters, and the relationships between individuals and society that protrude therefrom. She has been working across various media, including painting, installation, text, video, and sound, to examine the underlying structures of recurring social violence and connect them to individual survival.

In Keem Jiyoung's early works, she explored various ways to give voice to the unspeakable, driven by an interest in the pervasive violence surrounding our lives. However, following the 2014 Sewol Ferry tragedy, which deeply shocked the entire nation, she became increasingly concerned with how to articulate pain without objectifying it.

This turning point led her to closely examine the structural and socio-political fractures that allow social disasters to recur. Through her work, she reveals the presence of individuals navigating these systems, shedding light on their existence within the broader societal framework.

For example, in her first solo exhibition, 《Tilted Land Even Wind》 (O'newWall E'Juheon, 2015), Keem Jiyoung presented her response to the Sewol Ferry tragedy through a multisensory experience. She transformed the originally flat concrete floor of the exhibition space into a slanted wooden surface, filling the space with rhythmic drum beats resembling a heartbeat, dripping water from the ceiling, blue lighting, withered plants in broken pots, and paintings depicting the sleeping figures of the artist and her acquaintances. 

Each of these elements functioned as a metaphorical device, evoking specific memories or sensations. As visitors stepped into the space, they were made to feel as if they were confronting an overwhelming wave or standing inside a ship. These multisensory elements turned the exhibition into a place where each visitor could engage with the space through their own breath and contemplation.

In her second solo exhibition, 《Wind Beyond the Closed Windows》 (Sansumunhwa, 2018), Keem Jiyoung explored alternative ways of perceiving and interpreting disasters that have occurred in Korean society since the 1950s, diverging from conventional media narratives. She was particularly wary of how such events are often consumed as spectacles in mass media and sought to break the illusion of images to reveal the concealed reality of these incidents. 

For instance, her ‘Blue Series’ (2016–2018), created using blue oil pastels on paper, depicted 32 disaster scenes, including the collapse of the Sampoong Department Store and the Daegu subway fire. While referencing newspaper photographs, the artist deliberately excluded human figures, instead rendering the scenes as landscapes. These monochromatic images, imbued with the paradoxical force of "static disaster imagery," compelled viewers to confront the past and recognize its presence in the present.

Alongside the ‘Blue Series,’ Attitude Toward Remembering (2016/2018) was an installation featuring knitted yarn slowly unraveling by a motor, evoking the interconnectedness of individuals and society, as well as personal events and historical incidents. 

This body of work underscores that structural issues in society and individual experiences are not opposing or separate entities but are deeply intertwined. It speaks to the necessity of solidarity and resilience in navigating life within such a society.

In Keem's work, the motif of "waves" appears repeatedly. In her first solo exhibition, which originated as an artistic response to the Sewol Ferry tragedy, waves served as a sensory means to remember an unrepresentable social disaster. For instance, the painting Wave (2015), presented in 《Tilted Land Even Wind》, depicted dark, heavy waves in charcoal, evoking death and recalling the helplessness and despair of that time. 

The same black, undulating waves reappeared in From April to March (2019). Composed of square wave paintings arranged like a mosaic, this work captures the changes in the waves observed at Paengmok Port over the course of a year, from April 2014 to March 2015, following the Sewol Ferry tragedy.

In the 《Young Korean Artists 2019》 exhibition at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Keem Jiyoung spatially intertwined the Sewol Ferry tragedy with similar structural catastrophes that have recurred throughout Korea’s modern and contemporary history. She presented Wind (2015/2019), a multi-channel sound installation that converted the wind speed recorded at Paengmok Port over the course of a year into beats per minute (bpm), allowing viewers to perceive the wind of that day through their movement within the space. 
 
By placing this sound within the exhibition, Keem positioned the temporal axis of the space around the Sewol Ferry tragedy. Visually, she juxtaposed it with ‘Blue Series,’ a collection of still, monochromatic blue landscapes depicting tragic events from Korea’s history. Through this layering, she invited viewers to perceive these historical tragedies as intertwined with the present.

The candle sculpture Look at This Unbearable Darkness (2019), placed on the exhibition floor in the shape of clasped hands, metaphorically represents the time and struggle of those who have fought to face reality amid devastating tragedies. The traces of melted wax left on the piece visually capture the movements and time of those who have resisted and endured against a brutal reality. 

Through this series of works, Keem Jiyoung sought to confront the present reality in the aftermath of the Sewol Ferry tragedy. According to the artist, she aimed to show that "this movement must and is continuing." In this sense, her work does not fossilize the tragedy of that day into a distant past but instead brings it into the present—an ongoing process of confrontation and remembrance.

Meanwhile, Keem Jiyoung’s third solo exhibition, 《Glow Breath Warmth》 (WESS, 2020), introduced the ‘Glowing Hour’ (2020–) series for the first time, marking a shift in the artist’s approach to distancing from her subject matter. While her previous work, Look at This Unbearable Darkness, was closer to figurative sculpture, faithfully transferring the image of clasped hands, the ‘Glowing Hour’ series signals a move toward abstraction. By choosing oil painting as her medium, Keem’s work began to gradually take on a more abstract tendency.

The ‘Glowing Hour’ series, which uses candlelight as its subject, evokes the flames that might have once burned atop the extinguished wicks of Look at This Unbearable Darkness. Rather than directly reproducing the shape of a candle flame, the abstract canvases, imbued with a subtle red glow, are visual expressions of a certain warmth that the artist perceived after prolonged observation and contemplation.

Keem Jiyoung closely observed the various facets of the glowing candle, layering the side, front, top, and temperature of the candle on the canvas. This ongoing exploration gradually expanded the small light of the candle across the entire surface of the canvas.

In her fourth solo exhibition 《Scattering Breath》 (2022) at P21, the ‘Glowing Hour’ series presents an even deeper abstraction. For instance, the thick red triptych works uniformly depict the warmth of a small candle, using rich red tones that envelop the entire canvas. Other ‘Glowing Hour’ works in the exhibition are so abstracted that the presence of the light source itself becomes almost unrecognizable.

Thus, the light in ‘Glowing Hour’ is not merely the momentary glow of a candle, but evokes many other elements, such as the dazzling light of sunrise, the dusky glow of sunset, and the vitality of life itself. Keem Jiyoung has compared the time when the wick of a candle burns and emits light to the span of an individual's life. The ‘Glowing Hour’ reminds us that just as a small flame radiates light, and that light moves and scatters, all living beings must naturally breathe and shine in their own right.

Keem Jiyoung has recently been exploring the combination of swirling wave images with text in her work. In her 2024 solo exhibition 《With Night’s Nape Between Our Jaws》 at P21, she presented the new 'Wrath, Tidal' series, where text fragments prominently appear in front of the image, immediately drawing attention. The text here does not directly describe the wave images but instead consists of poetic phrases such as “The Past Arrives As the Future’s Face,” “And Breath Unfurls Into Wind,” and “We Are Briefly Alive.”

This incongruity creates a tension between concrete forms and abstract language, allowing the image to function on multiple levels. The sense of unfamiliarity and discord in this situation encourages the viewers to reflect beyond the surface that is immediately readable and visible.

In this way, Keem Jiyoung's work does not reduce the tragic events that have repeatedly occurred due to social structural issues to fixed meanings, but rather presents them as something we must revisit and re-read. At times, by viewing disasters from a close distance and at other times from a far distance, she emphasizes their present-day nature and evokes the connected sensibility between the individual and society.

”The tragedy, brutality, and the gravity of this disaster, and the damage it’s all caused, makes this subject itself very heavy. I think that if we’re weighed down by such heaviness itself, we end up moving away from the subject altogether.

As an artist, I believe that I must be able to bear that weight. Although I may not be able to deal with it all at once, I believe that I should bear it in portions with every work, and record it all through art.” (Keem Jiyoung, MMCA 《Young Korean Artists 2019》 Interview)

Keem Jiyoung received B.F.A. at Kookmin University and M.F.A. at the Korea National University of Arts. Her solo exhibitions include 《Tilted Land Even Wind》 (O'newWall E'Juheon, Seoul, 2015), 《Wind Beyond the Closed Windows》 (Sansumunhwa, Seoul, 2018), 《Glow Breath Warmth》 (WESS, Seoul, 2020), 《Scattering Breath》 (P21, Seoul, 2022), 《With Night’s Nape Between Our Jaws》 (P21, Seoul, 2024), and 《Breath of the Mouth》 (PHILIPPZOLLINGER, Zürich, 2024).

She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions such as 《The Melting Sea》 (Art Space Pool, Seoul, 2017), 《Young Korean Artists 2019》 (MMCA, Gwacheon, 2019), 《The Pearl Diver》 (Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Ansan, 2021), 《The 21st SONGEUN Art Award Exhibition》 (SONGEUN, Seoul, 2021), 《Rales, wheezes and crackles》 (DOOSAN Gallery, Seoul, 2022), and 《Traces and Threads》 (KÖNIG Seoul, Seoul, 2024).

Keem Jiyoung has been an artist-in-residence at the SeMA Nanji Residency (2019), the MMCA Residency Goyang (2020-2021), Incheon Art Platform (2021-2022), and SFAC Seoul Art Space Geumcheon (2022-2023). Her works are held in collections such as the Burger COLLECTION, SONGEUN Art and Cultural Foundation, PARK SEOBO FOUNDATION, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, PODO Museum, and Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art.

References

• 김지영, Keem Jiyoung (Artist Website)
• 김선옥, ‘미술 아닌 것’을 현시하는 미술
• 임서진, 김지영의 기억 작업과 응축된 시간
• 월간미술, NEW FACE 2016 김지영 – 내가 할 수 있는 말, 예술에 대한 믿음
• 아트바바, 산수문화  - 김지영 개인전: 닫힌 창 너머의 바람 (Artbava, Sansumunhwa – Keem Jiyoung : Wind Beyond the Closed Windows) 
• 57STUDIO, 젊은모색2019: 액체, 유리, 바다 | 김지영
• P21, 산란하는 숨결 (P21, Scattering Breathe)