Price
₩600,000
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.
Authentic City
An Sohyeon
- Category
- Photography
- Material
- Pigment print What's a pigment print? →
- Size
- 40×50cm · Size 10 · Small How big is this? →
- Year
- 2023
- Edition
- Edition 2/10 What's an edition? →
- Price
- ₩600,000
- Availability
- For sale
About the Artist
Ahn Sohyun is an actress and visual artist who reconstructs urban landscapes with a painterly sensibility. Working primarily with the medium of photography, she captures scenes and expresses the emotional density between reality and fiction through dreamlike colors and perceptual gaps. Her work begins from the act of drifting through the city like swimming, allowing fleeting moments to linger in the senses and expanding them into new perspectives toward the future. After graduating from Sangmyung University's Department of Photography, Film, and Media, she has been building her own visual language since her first solo exhibition in 2017, presenting urban images where painterly qualities and emotional rhythms intersect in exhibitions such as CITY OASIS and Authentic City. She was selected for the Ewha Art Cube, Porsche Dreamers On Artists, and the Seoul Battleship exhibition, and directed and starred in the art film LUNATIC, which received awards and invitations at independent film festivals in New York, Paris, Moscow, and elsewhere. In 2023, she published the book Only Love Is the Answer: The Birth of Sens, encompassing text, images, and performance, expanding her multilayered explorations of identity and sensation. Recently, she has been extending her activities as a planner and curator, creating scenes across exhibitions and screens, ensuring that art serves as a sensory conduit connecting the future and the present in changing environments. Her work is always grounded in 'boundaries,' recording the gaps between image and language, everyday life and art, emotion and structure.
Artist Statement
NEW REMINISCENCE
There are times when I feel the lyrics of a song even though it is not in my own language. For me, that song was Shunza's 順子 【寫一首歌 APRIL 5 1969】. Together with the resonance spreading from her clear voice, the Chinese language coming through was singing of a love from the depths, as though recalling something. In the same way, there is a language inside a photograph, too. I have made work like a song, interpreting and bringing out the language within the time-and-space I happened to embalm. I read and drew out the language inside photographs that spoke to me, or that I spoke to. With a lightness of gaze, I sought out scenes in which a melody could be heard, and met them face to face. Among the works in this exhibition, Hokney 02, set against a swimming pool, is a direct homage to David Hockney, whose work I listened about a great deal during my 2018 solo exhibition [CITY OASIS]. That was a meaningful moment—an opening to a new work made through the influence visitors had on me. It is the act of making yet another new reminiscence out of the languages of new reminiscences. The works in this show, photographed just before COVID-19, were made from the motif of vivid memory, a little more lavishly, perhaps a little more idealized than they really were. Places I could once reach without any restriction now feel, walled off by an invisible barrier, like a single dreamlike vision—that became the central perspective and the way I rendered them. Each moment becomes a process of survival; we are experiencing birth and death, an extreme balance. I came to realize that the daily life that seemed endless was in truth profoundly finite. The form things have taken now, born of an unknowable longing, may perhaps be the defense mechanism of that animal called the human, which has awakened these works.
Key Career Highlights
Magazine
Korean Landscape and the Lives of Common People — The Documentary Photography of Cho Mun-ho, Jeong Yeong-shin, and Kim Soo-oh
The flow of Korean documentary and landscape photography — the practices of three masters Cho Mun-ho, Jeong Yeong-shin, and Kim Soo-oh, plus five collecting perspectives.
May 10, 2026 · Seed Art Festival
A First-Time Art Buyer’s Price Guide — From ₩300K to ₩10M
“How much should I start with?” The most common question from first-time art buyers. Here is what you can buy, and how to choose, at four price tiers — ₩300K, ₩1M, ₩3M, and ₩10M.
Apr 30, 2026 · Seed Art Festival
Korean Artworks for Offices and Cafés — A B2B Collector's Curation Guide
Korean artworks for offices, cafés, and meeting rooms. Selection principles by space, five practical tips for B2B collectors, media and tax guidance, and 5 SAF picks.
May 10, 2026 · Seed Art FestivalOther works by An Sohyeon
View All
More Photography Artworks
View all Photography
Price
₩600,000
Two beginnings made by one piece
- For you —
- One of only 10 limited prints
- 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.