Inward Journey of Myong Hi Kim

Myong Hi Kim does not wear her formidable intelligence on her lapel.  You have to engage with her and with her work, intuit it at first and then to confirm that it is there, powerful in its implications.  She will entice you to enter her world by using light or happiness or beauty and then allow you to start to understand that life is not as simplistic or idyllic as you thought.  She does not preach rather she opens up the pathways inviting you to wander through the amazing integrated world she has constructed. She talks about that world as an “interspace where reality is renegotiated and a new consciousness is embodied.” Using chalkboard or video screen or a wave-like flow along a grouping of figures she takes you on an energized journey into your own thoughts and emotions.  

There is a particular energy in Myong Hi’s work that comes from a place of belonging.  She is confident and strong in her position as a woman and as an artist.  She quietly and stealthily constructs her work using all of the amazing resources she has amassed during a lifetime of traveling, working, seeing and perfecting her vision. In this exhibition Myong Hi presents us with Ironing, a Vermeer-like self-portrait in which she gives us a clue to her universality and modern sensibility through the world map reflected in the mirror on the wall behind her. She is a thoroughly contemporary and internationalized woman engaged in a conventional Korean woman’s task with no regret. This is an inward-looking work containing strong emotion and life affirming strength.

Paul Chaleff

Professor of Fine Arts

Hofstra University

March 2012