Artist Profile Kimari

Kimari’s intertwined sculpture evocatively translates the quiet labor of memory into a physical tether of connection.

Artist Statement

The work reflects the fragile yet binding nature of family lineage where connection and separation are inseparable. The intertwined form recalls the gesture of traditional braided hair, symbolizing memory, labor, and identity woven across generations. The combination of soft paper yarn and red, metallic thread creates a rhythm between fragility and persistence, and between human warmth and the coldness of time. The piece ultimately contemplates how material traces can hold emotional weight, and how family, like paper, is easily torn yet continuously repaired through acts of care and endurance.

Artist Biography

Kimari (b. Seoul, South Korea) is a visual artist currently based in Seoul. Her practice explores the fragile tension between structure and emotion through painting, mixed media, textile, and sculptural forms. Using clay or worn out materials such as fabric scraps, thread, and everyday objects, she builds layered compositions that reflect on memory, containment, and transformation. Her works often trace gestures of repair. Stitching, knotting, and binding; acts that quietly resist disappearance. Through these tactile processes, Kimari investigates how physical matter can carry the residue of human presence and how fragility can become a form of persistence.

Recent selections include Shortlisted for Artevol (LAC, 2025), Suboart Magazine Interview Issue 48 (2025).