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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.
Kimchi 2024-3
Lee Hyeonjeong
Authenticity
One-of-a-kind original
About the Artist
Lee Hyunjeong is an artist who visualizes Korean identity and the traces of modern history through her 〈Kimchi〉 series and works on peace and the DMZ. Her solo exhibitions include 〈Kimchi_Breath〉 at CICA Museum (2022), 〈Kimchi〉 at Alternative Art Space Ipo (2019) and at GALLERIE LUTÈCE PRESENTS in COEX (2024), and 〈Ms. Lee's Drifting〉 at the Jeong Mun-gyu Museum of Art (2023). She participated in the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics' 〈DMZ Art Festa: Peace—Wind〉, was invited to 〈UTOPIA?! PEACE〉 at the Berlin Wall Memorial and Kunstraum Potsdam (2023), and received the Excellence Award at the 2024 Fukuoka Art Award. In 2026, she was selected as a long-term resident artist at the Hongti Art Center (Busan Cultural Foundation). Her works are held in the collections of the Fukuoka Art Museum and the Goseong DMZ Museum.
Artist Statement
Lee Hyeon-Jeong works across painting, installation, and performance, taking up the sense of time made by 'breath' and 'fermentation.' Her work often touches the viewer's bodily senses through fierce reds and vivid materiality, but it does not consume that discomfort merely as shock; to the end, it holds onto the warmth of "time that survived" and the possibility of recovery. In her 2018 work 《Breath-Path》, the artist left red traces in chili powder on a frozen river. The red color spreading across the cold, fixed surface was an outpouring of suppressed feeling and, even within a frozen world, a way of "being alive" that came through to the end. That first scene was extended into the 'Kimchi Series' she has continued since 2019. For the artist, kimchi is both a self-portrait and a metaphor of life. The process of being salted, mixed, and slowly turning into other tastes and textures within waiting resembles the way wounds and memories move and shift within a life. Later, in 《Breath—Heart of Heavy Meaning》, Lee Hyeon-Jeong does not explain breath and heart as mere physiological phenomena. She lets viewers experience, within the space, the points where life and death, the material and the immaterial, past, present, and future touch one another, and she draws out a sense of the connection between 'you and me' arising in the process. This inquiry has now extended beyond installation and image into performance, continuing in encounters with viewers. In the 〈Mr. Lee! Drift Diary〉 series, she rewove her family's experiences and records into gauze books, archives, text, video, and installation, trying to convey, in the language of the senses, a time that words cannot fully carry across. The personal narrative widens beyond family history into the wounds left by history, and the question of 'disappearance/record/testimony' is shifted, not into representation, but into sensorial installation and act. The layers of the gauze books, the fermentation of kimchi, the heart objects and performances—all are devices that reveal the strata of being and memory transformed by time, and become the routes by which what has vanished returns again as sense. In 2023, on the invitation of KuBB Germany, she took part in the exhibition and performance program 《UTOPIA?! PEACE》 at Kunstraum Potsdam in Potsdam, Germany, and in 2024 she received the Excellence Prize at the Fukuoka Art Awards.
Key Career Highlights
Solo Exhibitions 2024 GALLERIE LUTÈCE PRESENTS_Kimchi (12/24-12/28, COEX, Seoul) 2023 Ms. Lee's Drifting (2/15-3/1, Jeong Mun-gyu Museum of Art) 2022 Kimchi_Breath (3/30-4/3, CICA Museum) 2022 Moon of the Top (1/10-1/26, Gallery Hoho) 2021 Breath_Profound (1/28-2/17, Art Jamsil) 2019 Kimchi (11/20-11/30, Alternative Art Space Ipo) 2016 WHO AM I? (11/25-12/8, Jeongsu Gallery) 2015 Form Is Emptiness, Emptiness Is Form (3/11-4/3, AP Gallery) Selected Group Exhibitions 2025 <DMZ International Art Exchange Project for the 80th Anniversary of Liberation: Beyond Borders>, DMZ Museum & Unification Observatory, Goseong (Gangwon-do) 2025 <Counter Memory, Counter Voices> Finale Performance, Daegu Station, Daegu 2025 <New Simdo Journey - Bridging Two Worlds Through Art>, Ganghwa War Museum Lawn, Ganghwa 2024 <Fukuoka Art Award 2024> Laureate Exhibition, Fukuoka Art Museum, Japan 2023 <UTOPIA?! PEACE>, Kunstraum Potsdam / Berlin Wall Memorial (Bernauer Straße) / Babelsberg Palace, Germany 2023 <FREEDOM 2023>, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Japan 2022 <Changwon Sculpture Biennale - Beyond Borders Project>, Seongsan Art Hall, Changwon 2022 <SIEAF Seomjin River International Experimental Art Festival>, Jewolseom, Gokseong 2021 <After DMZ, Breath of the Earth>, Yangpyeong Museum of Art, Gyeonggi-do 2021 <Yeosu International Art Festival>, Yeosu Expo Convention Center, Yeosu 2020 <Kathmandu Contemporary Art Exhibition>, Nepal Art Council, Kathmandu, Nepal 2018 <DMZ Art Festa 2018 "Peace: Wind"> (2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics), Goseong Unification Observatory & DMZ Museum, Gangwon-do 2018 <DMZ Art Festa 2018 "Peace: Wind"> (2018 PyeongChang Winter Paralympics), Gwanghwamun Square, Festival Park PyeongChang, DMZ Museum, Gangwon-do and others Awards & Selections 2026 <Hongti Art Center Residency> Long-term Resident Artist Selected, Busan Cultural Foundation 2024 2nd <Fukuoka Art Award> Excellence Award, Fukuoka Art Museum 2023 <UTOPIA?! PEACE> Invited & Selected, Kunstraum Potsdam / Berlin Wall Memorial / Babelsberg Palace, Germany - Berlin Wall Foundation & Kunstraum Potsdam 2018 <DMZ Art Festa 2018 "Peace: Wind"> (2018 PyeongChang Cultural Olympiad) Artist Selected, Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism & Gangwon-do 2016-2017 Overseas Exhibition Corporate Sponsorship Artist Selected, Shinjin Steel Co. 2013 20th <Korea Art International Competition> Excellence Award, Korea Art International Exchange Association and others Collections Fukuoka Art Museum (2024) Goseong DMZ Museum (2018)
Related materials
Artbava · Original Korean article
This article text is currently available in Korean. Open the source to read the original version.
Public Art · Original Korean article
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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.
CICA Museum · Original Korean article
This article text is currently available in Korean. Open the source to read the original version.
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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.