Nanhee Kim’s practice takes shape through movement across Korea, the Netherlands, and Germany, and through sustained exposure to differing social and political systems. Repeated displacement generates a heightened sensitivity to how emotion is formed, regulated, and constrained by external structures. Painting becomes a method of inquiry rather than expression alone, examining the point where personal affect intersects with social conditions. Silence, hesitation, and emotional residue are treated as material, allowing unresolved states to remain visible without resolution.

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How has your upbringing or cultural heritage shaped the themes and techniques you explore in your art today?

I studied in Korea, the Netherlands, and Germany, and am currently living in Germany. Moving between different countries and social systems, I’ve repeatedly found myself in the position of an “alien”. This continuous displacement has heightened my sensitivity to how individual emotions are shaped, conditioned, and sometimes constrained by social and political structures.

As a consequence, my work focuses on the intersection where personal affect and social conditions meet, using painting as a way to examine how internal states are produced through external frameworks.

Have you ever felt drawn toward a conventional career path? What made you take the creative leap despite the risks?

I guess most of artists including me concerns about financial stability and institutional security have always accompanied in the artistic practice. The further my work moves away from market-driven or institutionally “safe” directions, the more uncertainty follows. Although, I chose not to adjust myself to predictable outcomes or predefined forms.

For me, art is not a language meant to explain or persuade, but a space in which unarticulated emotions and silences can exist without resolution. Being in the studio allows me to step a bit outside social roles and expectations, and to remain with these unresolved states. Continuing this process despite its risks has become the only way for me to sustain meaningful questions rather than suppress them.

How does your art engage with or comment on pressing contemporary issues—social, political, or environmental?

Rather than presenting direct political statements or slogans, my work addresses the emotional responses individuals experience within social and political structures. Systems of regulation, subtle censorship, and exclusion often leave traces on the body and psyche. 

I focus on these residual effects small shifts in emotion, hesitation, silence and translate them into painterly structures. The confusion and withdrawal I experience as an alien (or a foreigner) are not merely personal feelings, but symptoms of broader social conditions reflective of our contemporary moment.

What do you think is the most meaningful role an artist plays in society today?

I believe the artist’s role today is not to offer clear solutions, but to sustain uncomfortable questions. In particular, it is crucial to reveal which emotions, voices, or experiences are quietly excluded beyond the boundaries defined by institutions and markets. Art has the capacity to remain within complexity rather than resolve it to preserve what society often seeks to simplify, neutralize, or overlook.

Do you feel a personal connection to your subject matter is essential? How has this connection shaped your work?

My work begins with personal experience, but it does not aim to remain at the level of emotional confession. Personal connection functions as just a material rather than as an endpoint. Instead of universalizing my feelings, I examine the conditions under which those feelings emerge. Maintaining this distance allows me to avoid being consumed by emotion while preserving a sense of density and tension within the work.

Do you think art created for commercial success loses its integrity, or can it still hold meaning?

The problem is not commercial success itself, but the limitation of interpretation imposed before a work even begins. For me, what matters more than the visible outcome is whether a work secures the conditions under which new forms of thinking and questioning can emerge both during the encounter with the artwork and in what follows from it.

Therefore, even if a work is initially created with the aim of commercial success, I don’t think it loses its integrity as long as these conditions are preserved. I think artistic integrity is determined by how persistently a work sustains its questions without prematurely abandoning them.

Identify five habits or concerns you are actively trying to let go of in your practice.

✧ The illusion that my work needs to be liked by everyone

✧ The insecurity that everything I create will eventually lose its value

✧ The anxiety that stability inevitably leads to failure

✧ The impulse to produce work primarily for sale

✧ The pressure to prove my worth through technical mastery alone

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Nanhee Kim’s reflections position art as a space that sustains complexity rather than resolves it. Meaning arises through persistence, distance, and the careful preservation of uncertainty. Integrity is located not in stability or approval, but in the capacity to maintain conditions for questioning and thought. Through painting, lived experience is transformed into structure, holding tension without explanation and allowing excluded emotions to remain present.