Kim Yesul (b. 1989) is interested in reinterpreting the communities and places encountered in our everyday lives, creating specific situations that allow them to be observed from the perspective of a third party. In particular, the artist focuses on the multiple narratives that emerge simultaneously in contemporary society, the layered phenomena that arise within them, and the beings excluded from society, continuing a practice that unfolds these concerns at the intersection of art and design.

Kim Yesul explains that while studying product design at university, she naturally developed an interest in social structures and systems, and subsequently began translating these concerns into the language of visual art.
 
This interest is particularly evident in her installation and sculptural works. In her three-dimensional practice, she primarily uses ready-made objects to explore the intended functions of design embedded within existing products and architectural structures. Through strategies of dismantling and exclusion, she reveals the deteriorated structures and social systems inherent within them.

For instance, The Chambers (2019), a work in which streams of water were programmed to pour onto the ground from the windows of the former Anti-communist Office in Namyeong-dong — once used as a “torture factory” — at a specific time on a specific date, was conceived through the artist’s investigation into how the building had been connected to the municipal water system.
 
Meanwhile, Constellation (2020), which stemmed from Kim’s six years of experience working as a nightclub poster designer, reconstructs the “abnormality” operating within the underground economy through installation and flipbook formats, incorporating photographic records from that period as well as estimates and documents exchanged with businesses.

Meanwhile, in the video work Art Class (2021), presented as part of the group exhibition 《DOOSAN Art Lab Exhibition 2022》 at DOOSAN Gallery, Kim borrows the voices of children to speak about the weight and distance she feels toward art.
 
The video features eleven children in a choir singing “Art Class,” a song written by the artist herself. Dressed in velvet dresses and tuxedos, the children perform choreographed movements and sing along to piano accompaniment.

The nursery rhyme-like song “Art Class,” resonating through the children’s voices, begins with lyrics such as, “Taekwondo instructor / English tutor / Art class is my favorite / I’m sorry,” while mentioning drawing paper and crayons, prompting viewers to recall their own childhood memories.
 
Suddenly, however, the song shifts with lines like, “Performance art is impossible to understand / I don’t know what an artist talk is / Contemporary art, post-modern / What even is avant-garde,” momentarily pulling the audience out of the innocent world of childhood. The song concludes with the statement that one wants to become an artist when grown up, followed by a mother shouting, “Yesul-ah!”

The following year, children once again appeared as central figures in Kim Yesul’s solo exhibition 《Ironclad Fragger》 at Alterside. In this exhibition, Kim appropriates the conventions of coming-of-age narratives mass-produced within past subcultures.
 
In such stories, the protagonist is burdened with a destiny that compels them to struggle for certain reasons, undergoing training that guarantees empowerment and ultimately passing through a familiar narrative structure in which victory is won over a designated enemy.

The video work Sub zero excidian (2023), which borrows the narrative structure of Japanese shōnen manga, follows the protagonist Seoyeon as she struggles to protect the Earth. Seoyeon learns coding and how to operate robots under the guidance of her father, who is developing a microchip designed to save the planet.
 
One day, however, her father is killed by Seongjin, who conspires to destroy the Earth alongside those advancing a planetary destruction project. In response, Seoyeon confronts him in battle.
 
Seoyeon and Minjun eventually face each other in the Block Code Arena Championship, and through Seoyeon’s victory, peace on Earth is preserved. In the end, the two become friends.

Narratives centered on child protagonists often evoke a strange sense of nostalgia by touching upon the immature self of childhood. However, in Kim Yesul’s work, the child protagonists leave behind a certain sense of discomfort in that they appear as proxies for their respective fathers. Moreover, the mode of combat based on coding training recalls the children of today, who are driven into coding academies and compelled to struggle even in the acquisition of technological skills.
 
In this way, 《Ironclad Fragger》 follows the grammar of fictional animation while simultaneously evoking the realities of contemporary society, prompting us to turn our attention toward ourselves and those around us. In other words, it is a story about us — trapped within a loop in which we must continuously weave codes of discipline in order to effectively train children not as autonomous protagonists, but as substitutes.

In this way, Kim Yesul foregrounds children in her work in order to prompt viewers to reconsider contemporary reality and social systems. According to the artist, children are simultaneously “the most political beings” and “the most marginalized beings.” Throughout history, children have often been mobilized in the name of national causes or to deliver social messages with greater emotional force.
 
Not yet recognized as subjects capable of exercising their own rights within society, children have thus been used as proxies for the societies and nations constructed by adults. By appropriating this very condition, Kim Yesul reveals the structures oriented toward certain ideals and the contradictions embedded within them, ultimately addressing the realities of the present.

In the two-person exhibition 《Dinosavr》 (N/A, 2024), which continued her exploration of childhood, Kim Yesul collaborated with Rémi Lambert to theatrically present a world in which the age of dinosaurs and our own childhoods overlap synchronically. In this exhibition, dinosaurs and children do not merely coexist within the same world; rather, they become analogues for one another, intertwining in a cyclical relationship.

The existence of dinosaurs and the “young self” of childhood both remain firmly rooted in the past. Therefore, within this exhibition, the two should perhaps be understood not as coexisting together, but as sharing a state of absence.
 
In this way, the exhibition was composed of works that, through the figures of dinosaurs and children, alluded to things defined less by loss than by prior absence.

Meanwhile, the project presented with curator Kang Subin at 《The 13th Amado Annualnale》 at Amado Art Space in 2026 began from the perspective of “hyperstition,” in which a future not yet encountered preemptively organizes the present.
 
In this exhibition, Kim Yesul presented video works that regard the future not as a singular, completed destination, but as an ever-renewing constellation of open possibilities. Accordingly, the works presuppose not a single linear timeline, but a condition in which multiple potentialities coexist simultaneously.

In these new works as well, Kim Yesul once again places children at the forefront. In her practice, children appear as beings who, not yet fully incorporated into social signs and norms, remain capable of sensing other possibilities.
 
For example, in Chrononex Overdrive (2026), the boys encounter an unidentified figure and come face to face with uncertain layers of time. This figure takes the form of the boys’ adult selves arriving from the future, through which the future is revealed not as a destination to be reached, but as a condition already in operation, interwoven with the present.

Meanwhile, in Interflux Drifted (2026), multiple voices overlap through a song structured in the form of a traditional folk style consisting of lead and responsive singing. As the accumulating sounds seep through the gaps between the present and future of Chrononex Overdrive, they intersect at times and diverge at others, unfolding through continual variation.
 
Rather than aiming for polished vocal perfection, the song maintains slightly misaligned pitches and rhythms within a loose structure. This approach follows the conditions of oral transmission — a mode of utterance meant to be easily sung and passed on by anyone — rather than presupposing refined vocalization or precise execution.
 
Through this rough and unrefined form, Kim Yesul allows the future, understood as a state in which multiple possibilities coexist, to spread outward as a shared and amplified collective rhythm.

In this way, Kim Yesul examines the underlying structures and systems of contemporary society through designed objects from everyday life and through the figure of the child, unfolding the possibilities that emerge within those cracks through installation, sculpture, video, and other diverse forms. Deliberately diverging from established social norms and ideals, her work enables us to view — and sensorially experience once again — both the world we inhabit and the existence of the self within it from a new perspective.

"I want to reveal why the social system I live in has been designed the way it is and its degraded structure by deconstruction and exclusion. I think it brings us closer to reality by showing the failure of structures that aim for certain ideals. Above all, I want to deal with reality by actively revealing design and its political implications.” (Kim Yesul, Artist’s Note)

Kim Yesul received a B.A. in Design Engineering from Korea University of Technology and Education and completed her M.F.A. at Korea National University of Arts. Currently based in Seoul and Brussels, she works as a visual artist and as a graphic designer running the graphic design studio Platinum.
 
Her solo exhibition includes 《Ironclad Fragger》 (Alterside, Seoul, 2023). She has also participated in numerous exhibitions, including 《The 13th Amado Annualnale》 (Amado Art Space, Seoul, 2026), 《AMOR EX MACHINA》 (Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, 2026), 《Space Time Scenarios》 (Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, 2024), 《Dinosavr》 (N/A, Seoul, 2024), 《stocker》 (SeMA Storage, Seoul, 2023), and 《DOOSAN Art Lab Exhibition 2022》 (DOOSAN Gallery, Seoul, 2022).
 
Kim has also participated in a number of residency programs, including TOKAS (Tokyo, 2026), SeMA Nanji Residency (Seoul, 2023), and Tator Factatory (France, 2021).

References

• 김예슬, Yesul Kim (Artist Website)
• 월간미술, 김예슬 “어린이를 위하여”
• 한겨레, ‘고문 공장’ 남영동 대공분실…기록되지 못한 기억의 소환, 2019.10.19
• 김현주, [비평] 김예슬. 어린이. 아아아아아아악 (Hyunju Kim, [Critique] Yesul Kim. Children. Aaaaaaaah)
• 두산아트센터, [전시개요] 두산아트랩 전시 2022 (DOOSAN Art Center, [Exhibition Overview] DOOSAN Art Lab Exhibition 2022)
• 얼터사이드, [서문] 철갑신참 프래거 鉄甲神斬 Fragger (Alterside, [Preface] Ironclad Fragger)
• N/A, [서문] Dinosavr (N/A, [Preface] Dinosavr)
• 아마도예술공간, [서문] 제13회 아마도애뉴얼날레_목하진행중 (Amado Art Space, [Preface] The 13th Amado Annualnale)
• 퍼블릭 아트, [리뷰] 제13회 아마도애뉴얼날레_목하진행중 (Public Art, [Review] The 13th Amado Annualnale)