Yula Kim

Yula Kim (b.1996, South Korea) is an artist who employs her Third Cultural identity of expression to portray the connection between human cultures and nature through birds and their histories in her artworks. She grew up in Asia (South Korea, China), Polynesia (Hawaii), Africa (Uganda), and Europe (The United Kingdom). These diverse environments have given her ample cultural and environmental experiences to draw upon in her arts.Her inter-continental life has stimulated her ability to see the inherent aesthetics of nature, enlightened her gaze and helped her consider the significance of nature in individual lives, and society, as a whole. She offers a diverse viewpoint in her artwork as she describes the relationships between human desire, cultures and the natural environment.

Yula's artworks have been shown significant exhibitions including the Platinum Jubilee Collection at Kensington Council 2022, and the Tate Modern in Late March 2023. Then, her painting has been chosen to celebrate His Majesty's Coronation and will be digitally presented at Windsor Castle during the Coronation Concert on the 7th of May, 2023. 

Yula have previously studied BA Fine Art at Goldsmiths University of London, with being a part of an Interview Panel for student entry selection and Department Student Coordinator at the BA Fine Art Department. Then, she received Distinction award from the Academic Board of Concession and Discipline at the Royal College of Art for her MA dissertation.

Yula's arts are aimed to show a new connection between human cultural development and nature through the human use of bird and how human migration during the colonising period have affected endemic nature. While it is also aimed to consider our morality toward nature from the past and the present time and to relate how birds correspond to the histories of colonization and the consequences on nature and cultural shifts of arts nowadays through artistic practices and the historical connection of endemic birds with human skill and intellectual, cultural development in different places, which are represented by Now-Extinct OO birds in the Hawaiian Islands, and Osprey, who annually migrate from Scotland to Africa.

In her recent works, Yula painted them with the feeling of a poetic abstractive aura to evoke a sense of certainty and imagination in real life.They are composed of poetic abstraction-based painting, with a mixture of abstraction and humanistic historical objects; She juxtaposed/allocated different scenes on one canvas that represent historical connections to the following birds, said to add images of new viruses and add oo's feather cape.

As a painter, she uses lines, figurative and abstract shapes based on nature and urban spaces, vivid colours, and space to express her Third Cultural gaze to see our society and our connection to nature through her art practice, painting. She endeavours to state the cultural hybrid of considering the role of nature and its creatures in today's society in relation to civilisation and the philosophy of aesthetics as well as its influence on the intellectuality in human cultural development. Then, she uses her visual inspirations from birds in different geographies and narrates a new cultural viewpoint to paint a new concept of territory and reveal connections between human culture and nature. She also seeks to mutualise cultures indicating diverse perspectives.

Photography by Claire Ward