Internationally known also under the working name Aatchim, Joeun Kim (b. 1989) continues her practice of expressing layered memories and emotions through the use of translucent silk. Through a painterly process of constructing multilayered surfaces, the artist renders visible memories rooted in complex personal histories, encompassing pain, care, and love.

Joeun Kim Aatchim was born with intermittent strabismus, a condition in which one eye does not properly align with the other. Although she underwent corrective eye surgery in 2008, her stereoscopic vision was not restored. As a result, she temporarily put down her brush and, in 2010, left Korea for the United States, pursuing alternative paths such as writing theater scripts and working at a bookbinding studio rather than painting.
 
However, about nine years later, while searching for a more “challenging” artistic practice, she encountered traditional Korean painting. This experience became the turning point that led her to take up the brush once again.

Her first solo exhibition in New York, 《eye jailed eye》 (2019), traced the artist’s journey of returning to painting after her corrective eye surgery. In this exhibition, Aatchim transferred images of the women from her memories—her grandmother, mother, and younger sister in her hometown—onto silk.
 
Through this body of work, she explored the relationship between her vision, memory, and painterly practice, addressing a method of expressing memories marked by layered complexity through multiple strata of painting.

Her visual experience shaped by intermittent strabismus does not function as a limiting obstacle, but rather as a distinctive mode of seeing that enables the construction of multilayered pictorial compositions. Aatchim refers to her unique perceptual experience—shaped by sensing the world differently from others—as a “new binocular vision.” This concept describes the process of composing an image by combining memory and observation.
 
Her paintings, which appear as overlapping rather than clearly defined forms, reflect not only her perceptual experience but also visualize the evolving nature of memory over time, as well as the complex emotions and atmospheric qualities associated with her subjects.

As she began painting again, Aatchim established two personal rules for herself. One was to paint only what she had seen, and the other was to paint only what she remembered.
 
In the exhibition 《eye jailed eye》, Aatchim presented paintings centered on her mother. Through this body of work, she threads the ribbon back through her past exploring the pain of her mother’s depression, the cycle of trauma and the liberation of forgiveness.
 
These paintings, created through the process of revisiting past memories and emotions, honestly reveal what she had seen and remembered, offering gestures of understanding and forgiveness toward her mother—and toward herself.

Meanwhile, the illusory texture of the paintings, created with natural pigments on Korean silk, evokes the shimmer of memories that are faint yet undeniably present, as well as the gap between what is actually seen and what is later recalled. At the same time, it reveals the artist’s intimacy with her subjects.
 
According to the artist, when encountering something for the first time, one can only paint its front surface. However, the longer she observes and becomes familiar with a subject, the more she is able to recall all of its sides; thus, the more intimate the subject, the greater its transparency becomes.
 
The scenes of memory, rendered transparently across multiple layers of thin silk, move beyond mere surface representation to embody the layered complexity of the long-term relationship she has formed with her subjects.

Titled Unshoved (Fish Dish over Mom Picking Bone Out of My Throat) (2021–2024), this work presents two scenes tied to a single memory of the artist’s mother through a dual-layered structure. In the foreground appears the image of a fish dish, while in the background is the figure of her mother removing a fish bone lodged in her throat.
 
This painting recalls a childhood moment when the artist, in pain after a fish bone became stuck in her throat while eating, was helped by her mother, who gently reached in and removed it. The work renders this cherished memory—one that has remained vividly present in both her mind and heart—through a transparent and spatially layered composition.

Meanwhile, in her 2022 solo exhibition 《사자굴  [Sajagul] — Then, out of the Den》 at Make Room in Los Angeles, Joeun Kim Aatchim entered her own game that challenged her own memory. Her words 말 are her token 말 in this game, challenging the accuracy of her visual memory and pushes it to the limits until it breaks from reality and transforms into wild imagination.
 
Through this process, she visualized memory and language through drawing and painting. For example, in 사자굴 (Sajagul), which is also the title of the work, the word saja operates as a double meaning, shifting between lion (獅子) and the dead (死者). This linguistic ambiguity is translated into a non-linear visual narrative within her work.

And the artist translates the word to a nonlinear visual narrative with a specific scene in the movie Jumanji (1995)—how a lion appears in the film; a tail sweeps and hammers down the dusty piano keys with noise, and the older sister Judy tells the younger one, ‘It’s not real, Peter. It’s a hallucination.’
 
This scene, which she played hundreds of times with my sisters, was a direct parallel to the time during her mother’s sudden absence and all the mysterious things around the time when they lived above a piano store.

To depict these incomprehensible, somber, and fantastical memories, the artist first paints a concrete space composed of architectural details and specific objects. She then carefully invites her family into that space, examining and confronting her memories through their presence.
 
This approach draws inspiration from the concept of the “memory palace,” a mnemonic technique that originated in ancient Greece. By imagining a familiar space and placing items to be remembered within it, one memorizes their sequence through spatial movement. This method closely parallels the compositional structure of her paintings, in which the relationships between objects, spaces, and figures in memory are constructed in an integrated and spatial manner.

Even before encountering this concept, the artist had described her own mnemonic process as akin to a “memory palace.” Possessing hyperphantasia—the ability to vividly and continuously conjure extremely lifelike mental images—memory appears to her as flashes of scenes that are as vivid and concrete as reality itself.
 
For this reason, as long as she has information about a space, she is able to render everything transparently. In turn, painting itself becomes a new kind of “memory palace,” capable of holding, within its spatial field, the layered relationships tied to remembered places as well as subtle atmospheres that cannot be fully articulated in words.

In 2024, Joeun Kim Aatchim held her first solo exhibition in Korea, 《Minimally Invasive》, at Gladstone Gallery in Seoul. The exhibition title reflects the artist’s personal experience of undergoing surgery at the time. Through “minimally invasive” surgery—performed in a way that minimizes physical harm while treating the body—the artist began to reflect on the meaning of the term and apply it to herself.
 
Since then, Aatchim has continued to develop the ‘Minimally Invasive’ project, inspired by the idea embodied in the phrase itself: a desire to become someone who reveals herself as little as possible, yet remains vividly present in the memory of others.

The project is divided into four chapters—최 (最), 소 (小), 침 (侵), and 습 (襲)—according to the meanings of the individual Chinese characters that make up the title. In her first exhibition presented after returning to Korea, Aatchim revealed only 소 (小)—the most beautiful chapter—focusing on ideas of “smallness” and “less.”
 
The works presented in 《Minimally Invasive》 are derived entirely from direct observation and personal memory. By deconstructing these memories in a microscopic and prismatic manner, the artist examines moments of pain from multiple perspectives, expressing vulnerability through a dreamlike and poetic visual language.
 
In many of the silk works imbued with a pervasive sense of melancholy, figures positioned in the foreground often appear in compassionate scenes, offering comfort through warm embraces. Reflecting the artist’s belief in cherishing others in subtle yet invasive ways, the figures in her paintings protect one another through gestures of care and love, even at the center of suffering.

In Joeun Kim Aatchim’s work, imbued with autobiographical sincerity, the past and present overlap, and moments of pain are refracted through a gaze of gentle observation. The complexity of human memory and relationships is expressed through a new visual language.
 
Constructed through the layering of transparent silk, her paintings hold surreal memories of relationships with objects, spaces, and people. Moving beyond the artist’s personal history, these works quietly reach into the depths of the viewer’s own memories, extending a modest yet tender gesture of consolation.

 “Although each person perceives the world differently, we often speak as if we are feeling the same thing. In reality, no one truly knows how another person feels. No one can easily speak about another’s senses or pain. That is why I decided that from now on, I would work only with what I remember and what I see. I wanted to create paintings that honestly show, ‘This is how I saw it, and this is how I remember it,’ about the memories we shared.”   (Joeun Kim Aatchim, interview with Kyunghyang Shinmun)

Joeun Kim Aatchim was born in South Korea and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She received her BFA in Studio Art from New York University, followed by an MFA in Visual Art from Columbia University. Her solo exhibitions include 《Minimally Invasive》 (Gladstone Gallery, Seoul, 2024), 《Old Habit Theater》 (Travasía Cuatro, Guadalajara, México, 2024), 《Sheer Painer》 (François Ghebaly, LA, USA, 2023), and 《사자굴 [Sajagul]—Then, out of the Den》 (Make Room, LA, USA, 2022).
 
She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, including the Taipei Biennale 2025 《Whispers on the Horizon》 (Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, 2025-2026), 《To Bloom》 (The Page Gallery, Seoul, 2025), 《The Land of Exile》 (Aranya Art Center, Beidaihe, China, 2023), 《And the Moon Be Still as Bright》 (Harpers Chelsea, NY, USA, 2023), 《Durian On The Skin》 (François Ghebaly, LA, USA, 2022), and 《Machines of Desire》 (Simon Lee, London, 2022).
 
Joeun Kim Aatchim has received fellowships at Yaddo (2023), Triangle Art Association (2021), Lighthouse Works (2021), Foundation for Contemporary Arts (2019), and The Drawing Center (2018-20).

References

• 아침 김조은, Joeun Kim Aatchim (Artist Website)
• 경향신문, 다빈치도 지닌 ‘간헐적 사시’, 새로운 예술이 되다···“감옥에 가뒀던 눈을 해방시켰다”, 2024.07.26
• 엘르, 아침 김조은, 기억을 그리는 사람, 2024.07.29
• Vacation Gallery, [서문] eye jailed eye (Vacation Gallery, [Preface] eye jailed eye)
• Make Room, [서문] 사자굴  [Sajagul] — Then, out of the Den (Make Room, [Preface] 사자굴  [Sajagul] — Then, out of the Den)
• 글래드스톤 갤러리, [서문] 최소침습 (Gladstone Gallery, [Preface] Minimally Invasive)