Art protects art
8 out of 10
artists are shut out by banks
354
loans extended to fellow artists
95%
repayment rate — trust comes full circle
~KRW 140M
interest saved vs. predatory rates
Until the next exhibition, the next performance. For artists, income gaps are an unavoidable reality. For fellow artists forced into predatory loans just to afford paint, canvas, and studio rent, proceeds from this artwork become the Seed Fund — extending a fair hand at fair rates.
Voices of fellow artists
“The memory of going hungry for three days, alone, so my children wouldn't know.”
— 50s, theater artist
“I've been putting off urgent dental treatment because I can't afford it. I should be seeing a doctor regularly, but enduring instead of going has become a habit.”
— 50s, actor
“I kept delaying ear treatment because I had no money, and the symptoms in both ears worsened.”
— 30s, musician
“I couldn't pay my hospitalized mother's bills, so we had to delay her discharge, and she had to give up tests and treatment she needed.”
— 50s, actor/broadcaster
“Because of money troubles I had nowhere to go — drifting between gosiwon rooms and rehearsal studios, and for a while sleeping rough.”
— 30s, musician
“Because of unpaid rent, my collective was forced to vacate our shared workspace and home. Neither bank loans nor artist loans could help.”
— 50s, actor
“Without money, life collapses — and creating art? Out of the question.”
— 50s, artist
“It's painful that solving this month's money problems has to come before the work itself. As an artist, I can only earn well when the work succeeds — yet I have to chase odd jobs every month instead. It feels like being trapped in a vicious cycle.”
— 40s, musician
“Debt collection calls disrupted my rehearsals and performances, and the psychological burden made every day painful and the next day frightening.”
— 40s, theater artist
“Many times the loan payments looming each month forced me to step away from performing and focus on part-time work.”
— 50s, actor
“Sleeping less than four hours a night, juggling part-time jobs and theater — but the more I performed, the more debt piled up. Eventually I decided to quit performing.”
— 30s, actor
“When things were hardest, I couldn't even attend close friends' weddings or funerals — and as a result, relationships were severed.”
— 50s, actor/broadcaster
“When I said I was a stage actor, the loan officer called me "unemployed."”
— 50s, actor
“The shame and severed friendships that came with borrowing from people I knew, the pressure of failing to pay it back, the helplessness.”
— 50s, cartoonist/visual artist
“Even with programs meant for low-income citizens, I feel shame when I can't produce enough documentation simply because I'm an artist.”
— 30s, film/broadcasting professional
94 artworks sold, each becoming a seed of solidarity
One artwork becomes the oxygen that keeps a fellow artist creating.
Sales proceeds go to the artist mutual-aid fund.
Brave Wind
Kim Yeongseo
Authenticity
One-of-a-kind original
About the Artist
Kim Youngseo is an emerging artist whose work records, through the language of Oriental painting, the textures of time embedded in 'things that vanish.' She earned her M.A. in Oriental Painting at the Graduate School of Hongik University and held her first solo exhibition 〈The Beauty of Vanishing Things〉 at Sai Art Space in 2022. She has participated in curated exhibitions including 〈Depth of Traces〉 at Dongjak Art Gallery, 〈Between, or_Between〉 (Hankyoreh Curating School 3rd selected artist), and 〈Beautiful Record〉, translating the subtle textures of daily life into painterly form.
Artist Statement
If even a thing that has merely passed by has a back, then that too becomes an afterimage. The glances and scenes that have gone remain as images, and they return as ties of fate. My work is a record of the private gazes I have caught while passing through. When we encounter a scene by chance, we sometimes feel an unexplainable familiarity. Like the "punctum" the French scholar Roland Barthes described as one mode of looking at a photograph — never quite arriving in sharp focus, yet feeling as if one had once been inside it — my work brings to mind a faint, old black-and-white photograph. I layer many strokes of pencil, leaving out outlines and details. The scene that lingers somewhere in my mind was already blurred from the start; emotion begins to settle inside that incompleteness. Through my gaze, my own act of recollection unfolds, and viewers can also build their own readings. The aesthetician Wolfgang Kemp says of "narrative": "The visual arts begin with the best and most unconditional factor of visibility. They wish to bring things and actions close, not to set them at a distance." What may sound self-evident became, for me, a question. In my work, "distance" is not a matter of physical space but of depth, the depth that lies between sense and feeling. The act of recalling a particular scene always sets time in motion in waves; in the alternation of haze and clarity, of continuity and rupture, a single fragment of an image slowly comes back to life. The everyday moments we live only truly stay with us once they have passed. Such accumulated scenes blur, linger long, or are well preserved inside my work. My work carries the meaning of a record — of opening pages from a diary whose dates I no longer remember. Through that record we suddenly recall a sense that had remained, and rediscover the air of a familiar feeling. I hope that, through my gaze and my record, viewers may once again summon a landscape that has lingered somewhere within their own time.
Key Career Highlights
M.A., Department of Oriental Painting, Graduate School, Hongik University Solo Exhibitions 2022 <The Beauty of Vanishing Things>, Sai Art Space, Seoul Group Exhibitions 2025 <Manlyu Gwijong>, Idea Center, Seoul Young Artist Curated Exhibition <Between Between Rest>, Culture Experiment Space Hosu, Seoul 4-Person Exhibition <NO MATTER>, N2 Art Space, Seoul Hankyoreh Curating School 3rd Selected Artist <Between, or_Between>, Gallery Ilho, Seoul 2024 Dongjak Art Gallery Exhibition Planning Selected Exhibition <Depth of Traces>, Dongjak Art Gallery, Seoul <Simultaneous Art Alliance>, N2 Art Space, Seoul Emerging Artist Exhibition <Beautiful Record>, Culture Experiment Space Hosu, Seoul 2023 Emerging Artist Curated Exhibition <Artist H's Shop>, Dongtan Art Square, Hwaseong City Cultural Foundation, Gyeonggi-do <Dongjak: Expansion>, Dongjak Art Gallery, Dongjak Cultural Foundation, Seoul 3-Person Exhibition, GS E&C Gallery Siseon, Seoul <In Contemplation, Each Has Their Own Sound>, A-Lounge, Seoul
Related materials
Korean media · Original Korean article
This article text is currently available in Korean. Open the source to read the original version.
Korean media · Original Korean article
This article text is currently available in Korean. Open the source to read the original version.
Korean media · Original Korean article
This article text is currently available in Korean. Open the source to read the original version.
Korean media · Original Korean article
This article text is currently available in Korean. Open the source to read the original version.
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Recently Sold
94 artworks sold recently
Two beginnings made by one piece
- For you —
- One-of-a-kind in the world
- For the artist —
- the next month of their practice
- For a fellow artist —
- a new ₩3,000,000 path of low-interest support
354 artists have walked this path of recovery; 95% returned to open it for the next.