The Korean artist Jung S Kim mirrors her identity with Korean folklore in her photo series Circle. For the last ten years, Jung S Kim has taken self-portraits to detach from emotional feelings caused by her childhood memories. Kim chose self-portraits as an expressive art form that reflects the processing of her turbulent past. "The title Circle stands for the vicious circle of negative emotional energy that circulates without beginning or end."

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The photo series Circle is a personal story inspired by emotional events that Jung S Kim experienced in her childhood. She was seven years old when her parents divorced, after which she was forced to move to live with relatives. She ended up with her aunt, a shaman who kept Buddhist objects on her altar and paintings of folklore scenes. The paintings of her shamanic aunt had a great impression on Jung S Kim and her artistic development. “Since my parents got divorced, I had to move to different relatives’ homes. I felt like oil in water in the hard reality. I had to live with my aunt for five years. She was a fanatic shaman who, on the altar in her room, worshipped a Buddha, a spirit of a mountain, and a statue of a boy monk. Every morning she held a worship service with a wooden gong."

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Shocking folklore scenes

The shamanic form of Buddhist art is called Taenghwa in Korean. Korean traditional shamanic art includes not only Taenghwa, but also sculptures and all kinds of props related to the Korean religion. Understandably, the narrative artworks made a strong impression on Kim because, in Taenghwa's compositions, figures are often depicted with enormous beards or several heads. “A few primitive Taenghwa paintings hung above my aunt's altar. As a little girl, these shocking fairy-tale scenes frightened me. On the other hand, I also saw beauty in the beautiful colours of religious paintings. My childhood experiences with Korean artworks touched my soul, but I didn’t realize until I entered the world of photography. During my studies at the university, I tried out many different ways to express my feelings. With every attempt, I discovered over again that my subconscious mind was attracted by the Taenghwa paintings. Korean folk art became an expressive methodology and a great source of inspiration for my work."

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Self-portraits

Circle consists of several parts. Each image comes from different stories in Korean folklore paintings; Jung S Kim replaces the characters from the folk stories with fictional characters which she has formed from her childhood memories. Kim went through painful memories in the production of Circle, which made working on it a form of self-therapy. “As a small melancholic girl in an unstable environment, I withdrew into my imagination and adopted several characters from the Korean fairy tales to escape my reality. I wanted to re-interpret the characters' personalities from my subjective point of view. I deliberately distorted the personalities and converted these character roles into self-portraits of myself, with which I have portrayed my feelings and memories.”

“For me, art is a diary of my soul

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Kim projected her emotional feelings onto different characters from the folk legends, based on the dichotomy of good and evil, with the moral message that good always wins. “I use four different ways to chart my subjectivity and memories of the fictional characters. First, I seek direct and exaggerated empathy between a fictional character and myself. Secondly, I imagine a dark figure as a psychological attempt to tackle my negative feelings. Thirdly, in my work, I emphasize my fear. And finally, I imagine a cynical caricature that stands for moral hypocrisy. During the process, I try to reconstruct chaotic visions and heavy memories to escape my emotional experiences. In retrospect, I see my art as a way to overcome my traumatic experiences, while at the same time exploring and developing my own identity.”

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Jung S Kim uses digital photography without image manipulation. Only the colours in the photos are post-processed with Lightroom. In the studio, she uses real Korean folk paintings as backgrounds. She captured the backgrounds with a macro lens from traditional Korean painting art books and prints them on life-size paper. All costumes and props are based on Korean folklore. Kim purchased most of the costumes and props on the market and sometimes made the costumes herself.

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Communication with images

Western art has also became a source of inspiration, such as the paintings of Frida Kahlo and Gustav Klimt, photography by Joel-Peter Witkin, and fashion design by Alexander McQueen. When she first came into contact with photography during high school, she learned of its power from her teacher. “In high school there was a teacher who cared and praised my artistic talent. He taught me how to communicate through photography. I realized that there are not only letters and words, but various ways of communicating with the world. I process my life in art, which is a diary of my soul. I don't want to convey one special message to the viewers. All I need from the viewers is their empathy.” For the time being, Kim is not finished with her research of her inner life. "My next photo series, Between, is about the psychological side of the diaspora that has to do with my immigrant life between Korea and America."

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Jung S Kim was born in 1969 in Seoul, Korea and graduated in photography from the Chung-Ang University. In 2002, she emigrated to the United States where she built her career as an artist. Her work has been exhibited at Providence Center for Photographic Arts, The Griffin Museum of Photography, New York Foundation for the Art, The 3rd Asian Women Photographer Showcase Obscura Festival, and during Daegu Photo Biennial. Jung S Kim won the Fine Art Photography Award and the Director's Choice Award of the C4FAP and AHL Foundation of Visual Arts Award for The Grand Prix Juror Award of Merit winners.