Price
₩2,500,000
A unique original — the only one in the world
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
One artwork becomes the oxygen that keeps a fellow artist creating.
Sales proceeds go to the artist mutual-aid fund.
Trivial Everyday
Sim Hyeonhui
- Category
- Painting
- Material
- Acrylic on canvas
- Size
- 28×35cm · Size 5 · Small How big is this? →
- Year
- 2022
- Price
- ₩2,500,000
- Availability
- For sale
About the Artist
Shim Hyunhee is an artist who has maintained an independent path since the late 1980s through the 1990s, rejecting the dichotomous frameworks that dominated the Korean art scene. After studying traditional East Asian painting, focusing on ink wash and figurative work at Seoul National University's College of Fine Arts and its graduate school, she refused to settle into either the grand narratives of Minjung Art or the ink-centric orthodoxy of the established East Asian painting establishment. Instead, unbound by genre boundaries or rhetorical vocabulary, she focused on the 'compulsion to paint' and built her own artistic world. The most prominent subject in her oeuvre is the 'human figure.' She has painted the faces of elderly people—concentrating the trajectories of life and its joys and sorrows—as large-scale works of 200 to 300 ho (roughly 2 to 3 meters), maximizing the presence of her subjects. Her figurative depictions are notable for their layering of multiple lines and brushstrokes rather than smooth single-line finishes, capturing the flow of ever-changing impressions within a single canvas. By juxtaposing flowers, folk painting motifs, and everyday objects, she weaves sociocultural perspectives and personal sentiments toward her subjects in multiple layers. Shim was also remarkably bold in her formal and material experimentation. Starting with ink wash, she moved through thick coloring on traditional Korean paper (jangji), and overcame the limitations of paper repelling paint by expanding to canvas and acrylic. She viewed the term 'Korean painting' (Hanguk-hwa) as constraining artistic freedom when used to oppose certain concepts or to categorize art by materials. What mattered to her was not material classification but painting 'pictures of our time' in which Korean identity naturally permeates. This attitude is evident in her titles: she prefers intuitive, concise names like Girl with Tied Hair or Looking at Flowers over speculative, abstract titles, because the essence she wishes to convey lies in the subject itself. She stripped away authoritative and polished pretenses, focusing instead on the earnest, honest subjects encountered in daily life—like dishes to wash or a head of napa cabbage. Ultimately, Shim Hyunhee's work is the product of a persistent practice of breaking free from the narrow classification systems imposed by the mainstream art world. Rather than projecting the solemnity of an artist, she reflected on herself as an everyday person, translating sentiments arising from daily life onto her canvases in the most intuitive manner. Her work stands as the solid record of an artist who chose to protect her own truth over following trends, and is recognized as an important achievement that broadened the horizons of Korean contemporary art.
Key Career Highlights
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Two beginnings made by one piece
- For you —
- One-of-a-kind in the world
- For the artist —
- the pride of standing with a peer
- 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.