Minjee Kim

Minjee Kim is a visual artist and storyteller based in London and Seoul.

She previously worked as a commercial stylist and was fascinated by the ability to tell the story through film and digital. Above all, she believes that she can express the world of imagination without limits through digital work.

She is inspired by the habits and daily life of the social and family environment in which she grew up. In particular, the words ‘Surveillance’ and ‘Manipulated’ are keywords of her work, and she was greatly inspired by the Truman Show. Also, her work mainly focuses on the relationship between space and people. 

Raised by perfectionist parents, she was taught to act as error-free as possible in everything she does. For example, did she check every element of her house before leaving, did she leave anything behind somewhere, did all the things she had to do for the day, and so on. These trivial habits piled up and made her perfect personality, but they soon led her to obsessive thoughts, which made her mentally tormented again. When she thinks she has not checked, she runs into endless imagination. She titled this project 'Breakthrough' with the desire to get out of 'Obsessive Compulsive Disorder'. Towards her own utopia.

Also, her work is installed and displayed on a screen in her cabinet, which means that someone will look into the habits that she wants to hide. Or, opening the door implies that it leads to another world, 'Her Head'. Like 'Being John Malkovich'.

In particular, she was greatly inspired by Yayoi Kusama. It is because Kusama is also one of the representative artists who sublimated her disability into artwork. And this is where she gets the most inspiration because Kusama expands her message through space within her world.

Also, she believes that numerous limitations that are encountered in the real world can be overcome by digitally producing virtual worlds created with 3D graphics. While working as a commercial stylist, she became deeply skeptical of the disrespectful treatment of humans and animals by other staff. She believed that unnecessary human and animal labor could be replaced by digital to some extent and implementation beyond our imagination will be possible. It can also be said to be partly sustainable.

Her main keywords for work are 'Surrealism', 'Surveillance', and 'Manipulated'.