A digital archive of Asian/Asian American contemporary art history

Kim, Mikyung

Other Names: 김미경; 金美慶

Artist Website
Female

"My artworks allow me to spiritually and conceptually forge a link between myself, my ancestors, and my descendants. Moreover, the artworks exist as physical entities that allow them to be utilized as symbolic and spiritual meeting places for the many generations of my family. In essence, they are sanctuaries or conduits for the forces that have defined and will continue to define our family. Change and reflection in my life becomes manifest in my art as a distinctly personal expression while simultaneously being or personifying my ancestors as well.

Within the works, I attempt to embody specific temporal concepts such as: yesterday, today, and tomorrow, in a repetitive or serialized fashion, and how symbolically, these ritualistic expressions, in turn, exemplify the corresponding points of intersection in all of our lives. Further, I attempt to produce certain pathways of seeing and being, place outside of everyday experience, that express the dualistic aspects of ceremony, mysticism, and game. I explore these issues by creating tableau, monuments, and altar-settings exhibiting variations and combinations or permutations of scale, which ultimately communicate the uniqueness and transitory nature of relationships. These symbolic representations create links between myself, my lineage, and nature to form a general context for others to explore my own inquiry into the processing of time.

It is my hope to engage the viewer into associative and contemplative states; and in due course, to experience their own sense of temporal being within nature."

Mikyung Kim, Artist Statement, 2004

Gallery of Selected Works