Silent Night - K-ARTIST

Silent Night

2017
Pencil, Acrylic on Canvas
91 x 116.8 cm
About The Work

Kim Eunseol’s practice begins with a fundamental question about the sense of “listening.” Although she uses a hearing aid, her experience of perceiving the world through vision and other senses rather than relying on hearing leads her to understand sound and language not as fixed systems but as sensory relationships. Her works across various forms—including drawing, installation, video, and performance—to question the meaning of listening and the nature of the self, while exploring the boundaries between sound, language, and perception. 

In her early works, the artist expressed the idea that the individual is not a fixed entity but a constantly shifting and reconstituted state, using media such as installation and drawing. This line of inquiry later evolved into questions of “language” and “communication,” as she began to reconstruct autobiographical sensory experiences within the context of various relationships.

For instance, drawing from her own experience of moving between the “audible” and “inaudible” worlds, Kim has proposed the possibility of a new language that connects the two. Within these experiments, language is no longer confined to speech or text, but expands into bodily vibrations, visual afterimages, and tactile experiences. Furthermore, by juxtaposing her own experience of learning communication through lip movements and linguistic habits with the way artificial intelligence infers language based on data, the artist raises questions about how both humans and non-humans construct the world through language—and what communication ultimately means.

In this way, Kim Eunseol’s work addresses sensation, relationships, and language as a continuous set of questions, rethinking the conditions of existence through what cannot be seen or heard. Her work communicates through tremors that cannot be conveyed by words, addressing our bodies through senses other than hearing and allowing us to physically experience the narrative. 

Solo Exhibitions (Brief)

Kim Eunseol has held solo exhibitions including 《Intermediate Language》 (Post Territory Ujeongguk, Seoul, 2023), 《Thicket》 (Cheongju Art Studio, Cheongju, 2020), and 《Glue Play》 (Rund Gallery, Seoul, 2019).

Group Exhibitions (Brief)

Kim has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, including 《Interrogative AI》 (Incheon Art Platform, Incheon, 2025–2026), 《Looking After Each Other》 (MMCA, Seoul, 2025), 《Outreach Project #1-6_Seeing with 10 Fingers》 (Seokdang Museum of Art, Busan, 2024), 《Asynchronous Singing》 (ARKO Art Center, Seoul, 2024), 《Naran Naran: Days of Reading》 (Factory2, Seoul, 2024), and 《Someday, Everyday, Everybody》 (Nam-Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, 2020).

Residencies (Selected)

Kim has participated in several residency programs, including the MMCA Residency Goyang (Goyang, 2025), the SeMA Nanji Residency (Seoul, 2024), and the Cheongju Art Studio (Cheongju, 2019–2020).

Works of Art

Stories That Become Clearer as the Sense of “Listening” Fractures

Originality & Identity

Kim Eunseol’s practice begins with a fundamental question about the sense of “listening.” Although she uses a hearing aid, her experience of perceiving the world through vision and other senses rather than relying on hearing leads her to understand sound and language not as fixed systems but as sensory relationships. As seen in her early ‘Glue Play’(2016~) series and the solo exhibition 《Glue Play》(Rund Gallery, Seoul, 2019), she translates the invisible exchanges between people into the form of sticky threads, exploring the instability and repetition of forming relationships. Here, the act of “attaching and detaching” functions not merely as a physical condition but as a device that reveals the subtle tensions and emotional flows within human relationships.
 
In her second solo exhibition 《Thicket》(Cheongju Art Studio, Cheongju, 2020), this exploration of relationships expands into a more internal dimension. Through the imagery of tangled vines and dense forests, the artist reveals an ambiguous state between self and other, isolation and connection. Unrevealed inner thoughts, concealed emotions, and self-chosen isolation along with the anxiety it produces are visualized through the metaphor of the “thicket.” This suggests that identity is not a fixed entity but a condition that is constantly shifting and being reconfigured.
 
In her recent work, this line of inquiry shifts toward the issues of “language” and “communication.” In her third solo exhibition 《Intermediate Language》(Post Territory Ujeongguk, Seoul, 2023), the artist presents the possibility of a new language that connects the “world of hearing” and the “world of not hearing,” based on her own sensory experience of moving between the two. In works such as Conversations with Vibrating Bodies(2023), Seeing, Yet Unseen Language(2021), and The Silent Sound(2022), language is no longer confined to voice or text, but expands into bodily vibrations, visual afterimages, and tactile experiences.
 
This trajectory continues in AI Language Learning with Auditory Impairment(2022) and AI Language Learning with Auditory Impairment #2(2024–2025), extending into questions about how both humans and non-humans learn language. The artist overlaps her own experience of learning communication through lip movements and linguistic habits with the way artificial intelligence infers language based on data, revealing the misalignments and incompleteness inherent in communication. In this way, Kim Eunseol’s work addresses sensation, relationships, and language as a continuous set of questions, rethinking the conditions of existence through what cannot be seen or heard.

Style & Contents

Kim Eunseol develops her work by organically combining drawing, installation, video, and performance. In her early works, she visualized the sensation of “glue threads” through repetitive pencil drawing. In the ‘Glue Play’ series, the fine lines that densely fill the surface record the invisible relationships between people, while also revealing the artist’s position as both participant and observer. This repetitive act forms a rhythm that is at once obsessive and sensory, accumulating the physical temporality of the work.

In installation, this concept of drawing expands into space. The curtain-like installation presented in 《Glue Play》 creates a structure that is both transparent and obstructive, allowing viewers to physically experience the uncertainty and distance inherent in relationships. In 《Thicket》, tangled structures of trees and vines covered in white threads embody a dual condition in which the interior is concealed while presence is revealed through shadows. These installations go beyond visual representation, enabling viewers to experience relational structures within space.
 
In video works, the expansion of sensation becomes more direct. In Conversations with Vibrating Bodies, a chair equipped with a vibration speaker delivers physical sensations directly to the viewer’s body, encouraging an experience of “feeling” sound rather than hearing it. Meanwhile, in Passive Communication and The Shape of Voice, smartphones, subtitles, and symbols are used to show how textualized language moves and collides like material. Here, language is treated not as a tool for conveying meaning but as a visual and physical object.
 
In her recent work Fading Sounds, Lingering Sounds(2025), the artist emphasizes the incompleteness of sensation through semi-transparent structures, indistinct imagery, and blurred voices. Within this state of unclear perception, viewers encounter residual traces of sensation, revealing that language and communication are never complete. In this way, Kim Eunseol’s formal approach gradually moves away from a visual-centered framework, expanding toward sensory experiences mediated through the entire body.

Topography & Continuity

Kim Eunseol’s work begins with the specific sense of “listening,” but ultimately expands into a broader inquiry into the reconfiguration of the senses as a whole. Rather than treating the absence of sound as a deficiency, she proposes new possibilities of language through other senses—vibration, vision, and touch—thereby occupying a distinct position. This can also be understood as an attempt to shift conventional understandings of language that are based on auditory perception.
 
Her work also does not regard relationships and communication as fixed or complete states, but as processes that are constantly misaligned, delayed, and repeated. The acts of attachment and detachment in ‘Glue Play,’ the entanglements in ‘Thicket,’ and the delays and misunderstandings in ‘Intermediate Language’ all share this structural logic. This perspective frames communication not as precise transmission, but as an accumulation of imperfect exchanges and sensory experiences.
 
Kim Eunseol translates digital technologies and visual imagery into bodily experience. By re-sensitizing language through vibration, touch, and visual afterimages, her work raises questions about communication from a direction distinct from image-centered environments. In particular, by juxtaposing human sensory experience with the data-driven learning processes of artificial intelligence, she invites reflection on both human and non-human structures of perception.
 
Her practice has not been fixed to a single medium, but has continued to expand from drawing to installation, video, and performance. While consistently maintaining an interest in the gap between sensation and language, and the subtle vibrations that emerge within it, her work has evolved through diverse formal variations. Rather than presenting definitive answers, her practice reveals experiences that arise within these sensory gaps, prompting a reconsideration of how we understand one another.

Works of Art

Stories That Become Clearer as the Sense of “Listening” Fractures

Exhibitions

Activities