Dew Kim (b. 1985) explores the meanings of those who are marginalized or cast aside in a world striving toward normativity, as well as the intense, impulsive energy that emerges from such exclusion. His practice engages with themes such as queerness, feminism, sexuality, sadomasochism, popular culture, religion, and mysticism, and unfolds across sculpture, installation, video, and performance.

In his work, Dew Kim objectifies his own body to visualize queer narratives through its transformation, challenging the boundaries of social structures and binary thinking. For example, in his 2018 work Purple Kiss ♡, Kim sings of a new world through the persona of “HornyHoneydew”—a shaman and K-pop idol alter ego.

The work depicts the process through which Homo sapiens evolve into posthumans through shamanism. To ensure the future of humanity, the shaman HornyHoneydew, who has endured intense training, performs a soul-transference ritual on the day when Venus shines at its brightest, breathing life into a newly transformed human race.
 
As Earth gradually transforms into an environment resembling that of Venus, making it increasingly uninhabitable, Homo sapiens begin to dream of prosperity once again through their evolution into posthumans.

In this work, Dew Kim visualizes posthumanism through the lenses of gender, sexuality, religion, and science. In doing so, he appropriates the shamanistic symbolism embedded in K-pop songs performed by female idols, and introduces expanded, non-binary gender concepts such as Two-Spirit and multiple genders found in shamanistic traditions. Through this approach, Kim challenges and deconstructs the dualistic gender roles and heteronormative ideologies deeply rooted in Korean culture and society.

In 2019, Dew Kim, in the persona of the shaman HornyHoneydew, began using fire as a means to lead humanity into its evolution as posthumans. Throughout human history, fire has carried a wide range of meanings. In the mythos surrounding Homo sapiens—who are believed to have evolved with the use of fire—fire symbolizes the power of creation, transformation, and metamorphosis. Similarly, in Korean shamanism, fire has long served as a medium in rituals to transport souls to different spiritual realms.
 
At the same time, fire also symbolizes destruction and catastrophe. In medieval Europe, fire was used as a punitive tool against those who defied dominant Christian beliefs—including strong-willed women, dissenters, and homosexuals—with hell itself being imagined as a fiery abyss.

In his 2019 solo exhibition 《Fire and Faggot》 at Artist Residency TEMI, Dew Kim envisioned the future of a new human race destined for a new beginning on new ground, through the ambivalent power of fire—both as a force of creation and destruction. The exhibition roughly appropriated the structure of Christian mythology, transforming the "wretched" and persecuted figures throughout its history into pure beings through the fire ritual of the shaman HornyHoneydew.

The work Welcome (2019), which draws from medieval imagery of homosexuals being burned at the stake, evokes the image of a transcended victim. In this piece, Dew Kim places Molotov cocktails and talismans beneath red silhouettes of the persecuted, printed on fabric, as part of a ritual meant to console their souls and send them off to another world—a world beyond binary divisions. This gesture recalls Korean shamanic rituals, in which talismans are burned after a gut (rite) to comfort and release captive or suffering spirits.
 
In this way, fire, historically used as a tool to execute and oppress minorities, is reclaimed in Kim’s work as a shamanic and liberating force that consoles and frees the souls of the persecuted. The world guided by the shaman HornyHoneydew envisions a new human society where multiple, coexisting identities are possible—liberated from the binary structures of discrimination and hate that persist to this day.

The following year, Dew Kim released Kiss of Chaos, the second single by HornyHoneydew—his K-pop idol persona and shamanic alter ego—synthesizing his earlier works grounded in a critical stance toward binary thinking, such as purity and impurity, the sacred and the profane, subject and object.
 
In the 2020 group exhibition 《Tangible Error》 at d/p, Kim presented the release of this music project in the form of an installation, intertwining it with the myth of the Sumerian goddess Inanna (Ishtar).

Meanwhile, in his 2020 solo exhibition 《Dear Fear》 at out_sight, Dew Kim set aside his role as shaman to explore how fear and power affect the human body and psyche through the lens of sadomasochism.
 
To do so, Kim transformed the basement of the exhibition space into an underground dungeon of sadism and masochism, born from his own fantasies. This space, where the obscene and the sacred are inverted, becomes a site where even the humiliation of the masochist is transformed into the pleasure of pure affirmation. Within this realm, scenes unfold where “bodies without organs” revel in the pleasures of taboo.

For example, an anus suspended in a prison cell defecates not waste, but words. Possessing intelligence, this orifice delivers a logical manifesto for a revolution—one that halts the repression of the anus and embraces ultimate pleasure through it, heralding the birth of a new kind of human.
 
Surrounding it are genitals and nipples, mouths and anuses, hands and feet—having abandoned their corporeal form—connected to the instruments that restrain them, becoming fetishized objects embedded throughout the iron bars.

This space, constructed from bodily structures linked to forbidden pleasures, is both a utopia and dystopia of the posthuman. Beyond Dew Kim’s pornotopia, where loss and fear do not exist, as one steps behind the empty stage, the story of a masochist—who experiences intense pleasure and heightened bodily sensation on the threshold of fear—unfolds.

Beyond the safe play of transforming taboos into small instruments of pleasure, one confronts true fear and paradoxically experiences liberation of the senses through an autobiographical narrative. This process reveals the hidden inner truth beneath the surface of taboo—or social order.

Furthermore, through his 2023 solo exhibition 《I Surrender》 at VSF Seoul, Dew Kim explored the conceptual parallels between Christian iconography and religious rituals with the dynamics of BDSM, expressed through a variety of sculptural languages.
 
In the exhibition, the artist juxtaposed the seemingly opposing themes of queerness and Christianity by creating a play of Domination and Submission (D/s) typical of BDSM. For example, In the Garden (2023) depicts hands that appear to be praying, while simultaneously evoking the dominant partner’s hand engaged in fisting during an SM scene. Following the form of the clasped hands, the image gradually transitions into the intertwined bodies of two snakes.

In the Christian Old Testament, the snake symbolizes original sin, but in ancient times, it was regarded as a creative being representing rebirth and immortality. This intertwined and twisted form serves both as a Christian icon of Satan and as a metaphor for the possibility of connection between opposing entities, visualizing the energetic clash that occurs between the taboo and the sacred.
 
In the Garden, along with all the works in this exhibition, sculpturally reveals scenes where conflicting energies collide and coexist. Each piece intertwines elements of Gothic architecture—such as stained glass, wooden frames, iron bars, and grilles—with silicone that evokes the flesh of the body. These works express the new energy generated at the intersection of religion and queerness, as well as the sacred and the profane.

In the same year, during his solo exhibition 《The Last Scene》 at Alternative Space LOOP, Dew Kim explored the intersection of Christianity, queerness, and K-pop. Among the works, the Meta Temple (2022) project, which focuses on the intersection of Christianity and queerness, is based on research into the House of Xtravaganza—a community space that functions as an alternative family.
 
Kim studied the hands performance and voguing (a dance style emphasizing hand gestures) of the House of Xtravaganza and reinterpreted fourteen hand sculptures by Eui Soon Choi, which express the Stations of the Cross (the path of Jesus' suffering), as voguing hand performances.

The hands of Jesus, reanimated by those excluded from society—namely, queer individuals—take their place within the alternative religious temple called Meta Temple. Through this temple, Dew Kim proposes an alternative protective space where those marginalized by heteronormative values can coexist, envisioning a world where queerness and Christianity are not in opposition but are interconnected and supportive of one another.

Meanwhile, in the video work Last Scene (2023), the artist connects the final moments of a K-pop stage performance with the last appearance of Jesus. Kim says the structure of K-Pop presents the story in the most dramatic way possible, revealing the similar structure of the Christian narrative, which ends with the death and resurrection of Jesus. The audience cheering with holiness and ecstasy at the end of the performance by burning themselves to death overlaps with the metaphor of Jesus’ cycle and resurrection.
 
Similarly, a crown-shaped chandelier, LOOK, is suspended from a ring light and an iPhone for personal broadcasting. Through Instagram filters, the audience is invited to project their own faces onto the faces of the excluded.

In this way, Dew Kim has explored the various intersections of art, religion, and identity at the threshold of transformation and conflict, using multiple media including his own body. Through art as a form of ritual or magic, he connects elements traditionally seen as opposing forces in society, visualizing the new energy of change and creation that emerges from these connections.
 
Dew Kim’s work breaks down the boundaries of existing social structures and binary thinking, proposing an alternative world where marginalized beings can bloom anew in the cracks of these ruptures.

 “I am very interested in things that make people uncomfortable. I myself can be an uncomfortable presence in society. The root of ‘queer’ means ‘strange.’ By revealing and sharing things outside the norm through my work, I think I enjoy expressing strangeness.”  (Dew Kim, from the interview with Dazed) 

Dew Kim received his MA in Sculpture from Royal College of Art, London, UK and BFA in Metalsmithing and Jewelry from Konkuk University, South Korea. His solo exhibitions include 《The Last Scene》 (Alternative Space LOOP, Seoul, 2023), 《I Surrender》 (Various Small Fires, Seoul, 2023), 《Apocalypse Kiss》 (Fragment Gallery, Moscow, 2021), 《Dear Fear》(out_sight, Seoul, 2020), among others.
 
Kim has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, including 《The Last Carnival》 (PS Center, Seoul, 2025), 《How to Destroy Angels》 (The Horse Hospital, London, 2024), 《Masterful Attention Seekers》 (Museum of Contemporary Art Busan, Busan, 2024), 《Autohypnosis》 (G Gallery, Seoul, 2023), 《Fanatic Heart》 (Para Site, Hong Kong, 2022), 《Joy of Singing》 (Alternative Space LOOP, Seoul, 2021), 《Asia Project: Looking for Another Family》 (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), Seoul, 2020), and 《Post-Cyber Feminist International》 (Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London, 2017).
 
Dew Kim has participated in numerous residency programs, including the DOOSAN Gallery International Residency Program, ISCP (New York, USA, 2023), the SeMA Nanji Residency (2022), and the MMCA Residency Goyang (2021). His works are held in collections such as the MMCA Art Bank, the Sunpride Foundation in Hong Kong, and The Here and There Collective in New York.

References

• 듀킴, Dew Kim (Artist Website)
• 지갤러리, 듀킴 (G Gallery Dew Kim)
• 대안공간 루프, [서문] The Last Scene-부서질수록 확장되는 (Alternative Space LOOP, [Preface] The Last Scene)
• 아트스페이스 원, [서문] 젠더 + 기술: 오류의 재생 (Artspace One, [Preface] Gender Hierarchy: Recycling its Errors)
• 대전테미예술창작터, [서문] 화형 (Artist Residency TEMI, [Preface] Fire and Faggot)
• 아웃사이트, [서문] 친애하는 공포에게 (out_sight, [Preface] Dear Fear)
• VSF, [서문] I Surrender (VSF, [Preface] I Surrender)
• d/p, [작품 소개] Tangible Error (d/p, [Artwork Description] Tangible Error)
• 데이즈드, 정상성이라는 종교를 전복할 이상異常적인 이단이 있다.
믿습니다, 듀킴 작가의 달콤하고 신성한 주술. Horny, Honey, and Holy.