JI WOO KIM
We Yearn to Belong
August 5 – August 29, 2021

ATM Gallery NYC is pleased to present We Yearn to Belong, Ji Woo Kim’s debut solo exhibition. Featuring fourteen paintings, Ji Woo depicts kodak-like moments through the use of oil on canvas, recounting memories and the struggles beneath the surface. 

Ji Woo Kim’s work addresses ideas surrounding the need for a sense of community and belonging that is in our inherent nature. She comments on the marginalization she faces as an Asian American, a theme that recurs and has been evident since her youth. Given the alarming increase in hate crimes against the AAPI community within the past year, Kim speaks to the necessity of seeking togetherness and allyship as a response to alienation experienced. She explores themes of identity in the context of race and ethnicity while questioning the concept of home in relation to her own background as a first-generation immigrant, and examines resulting factors such as cultural identification and social dynamics, as well as their effects on one’s growth from childhood through adulthood.

Works like "International (No, you don't know)," "Lunchtime Heaven and Hell," and "You and I, We're Just Temporary Dwellers" are intended to highlight moments of alienation within assimilation. “Lunchtime Heaven and Hell”  is based on an elementary school memory of when Ji Woo first immigrated to Canada. Kim recalls lunchtime being a stressful experience, as her classmates would make fun of the Korean food her mother packed for her. Anxiety emanates from this work, what’s hidden is her face, head buried in the pink-pinstriped lunch box, as she eats her insecurities from a concealed thermos. 

The scene depicted in "You and I, We're Just Temporary Dwellers", is based on a photo of Kim’s mother when she spent a year abroad in her early 20s, studying in California. It shows her sitting in a barren room, with only a mattress and a few other items lying around. Kim also shared this experience, having lived as an international student in New York City. Can one ever truly make themself at home, knowing the stay is so short lived? 

Her most recent paintings depict group scenes from her mother's college years in South Korea. Ji Woo Kim often compares her experience of growing up as a first-generation immigrant to her mother’s experience of having lived most of her life in a place where she fully belonged. Throughout painting these works, Kim took on the role of an outsider, peering into a life with a sense of community that is foreign to her. Looking back at lonely college years throughout the both direct and indirect bouts of racism regularly experienced, feelings of alienation and the sense of being outnumbered are all too familiar, and through this body of work Ji Woo Kim hopes that she can somehow forge a community similar to her mother’s. 

Ji Woo Kim is an artist currently based in British Columbia, Canada. She received her BFA in Painting along with a minor in Art History with Highest Honors from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY in 2018.