Kimchi, and the DMZ
fermented identity, drawn borders
From the breath and fermentation held in a jar of kimchito a borderless art that runs from the Berlin Wall to the DMZ.
Identity, fermented —
a history crossing borders
Lee Hyeonjeong is a mid-career Korean artist who has visualized Korean identity and the traces of modern history through two intertwined bodies of work: the 〈Kimchi〉 series, and works on peace and the DMZ. Across her practice, the most Korean of everyday substances and the most charged of national borders are held in the same gaze.
The 〈Kimchi〉 works treat fermentation as metaphor — the slow, living transformation of a culture, the breath held inside a sealed jar. She has shown this series in solo exhibitions including 〈Kimchi_Breath〉 (2022, CICA Museum), 〈Kimchi〉 (2019, Alternative Art Space IPO), and 〈GALLERIE LUTÈCE PRESENTS_Kimchi〉 (2024, COEX, Seoul)— turning a fermented staple into a meditation on what it means to be Korean.
Alongside the jar runs the border. From 2018, when she was selected as an artist for the 〈DMZ Art Festa — Peace: Wind〉 at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, the DMZ and the question of division became a sustained theme. Her work on peace and transborder space has carried her from the demilitarized zone of the Korean peninsula to the former line of another divided nation.
In 2023 she was invited to 〈UTOPIA?! PEACE〉 at Kunstraum Potsdam, the Berlin Wall Memorial (Bernauer Straße), and Babelsberg Palace in Germany — placing Korea's DMZ in dialogue with the memory of the Berlin Wall. The Berlin Wall Foundation and Kunstraum Potsdam selected her for the project. Two borders, two divided histories, held in a single line of sight.
In 2024 she received an Award of Excellence at the second Fukuoka Art Award (Fukuoka Art Museum), and in 2026 she was selected as a long-term resident artist at the Hongti Art Center (Busan Cultural Foundation). Her work is held in the collections of the Fukuoka Art Museum and the Goseong DMZ Museum.
Major themes
- 1
The 〈Kimchi〉 series
Fermentation as metaphor for Korean identity — the slow transformation and held breath of a culture, drawn out of the most everyday of substances.
- 2
Peace & the DMZ
From the 2018 PyeongChang 〈DMZ Art Festa — Peace: Wind〉 onward, the demilitarized zone and the question of division as a sustained subject.
- 3
Crossing borders
Placing the DMZ in dialogue with the Berlin Wall — two divided histories held in a single gaze, from Korea to Germany.
The artist's timeline
- 2015Solo exhibition 〈色卽是空 空卽是色〉, AP Gallery.
- 2016Solo exhibition 〈WHO AM I?〉, Jeongsu Gallery.
- 2018Selected as an artist for 〈DMZ Art Festa 2018 — Peace: Wind〉 at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics & Paralympics (Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism · Gangwon).
- 2019Solo exhibition 〈Kimchi〉, Alternative Art Space IPO.
- 2021Solo exhibition 〈Breath_Profound〉, Art Jamsil; group exhibition 〈After the DMZ, Breath of the Earth〉, Yangpyeong Art Museum.
- 2022Solo exhibitions 〈Kimchi_Breath〉 (CICA Museum) and 〈Moon of the Top〉 (Gallery HoHo); Changwon Sculpture Biennale Transborder Project.
- 2023Solo exhibition 〈Mr. Lee! A Drift Diary〉 (Jeongmungyu Art Museum); invited to 〈UTOPIA?! PEACE〉 in Germany; 〈FREEDOM 2023〉, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum.
- 2024Award of Excellence, 2nd Fukuoka Art Award (Fukuoka Art Museum); solo exhibition 〈GALLERIE LUTÈCE PRESENTS_Kimchi〉, COEX, Seoul.
- 2025Group exhibition 〈80 Years of Liberation: DMZ International Art Exchange Project_Transborder〉, Goseong DMZ Museum · Unification Observatory.
- 2026Selected as a long-term resident artist at the Hongti Art Center (Busan Cultural Foundation).
Selected exhibitions & collections
- Solo: 〈Kimchi_Breath〉 (2022, CICA Museum), 〈Kimchi〉 (2019, Alternative Art Space IPO), 〈GALLERIE LUTÈCE PRESENTS_Kimchi〉 (2024, COEX, Seoul)
- Group: 〈UTOPIA?! PEACE〉 (2023, Kunstraum Potsdam / Berlin Wall Memorial(Bernauer Straße) / Babelsberg Palace, Germany), 〈FREEDOM 2023〉 (Fukuoka Asian Art Museum)
- Group: 〈80 Years of Liberation: DMZ International Art Exchange Project_Transborder〉 (2025, Goseong DMZ Museum · Unification Observatory), 〈After the DMZ, Breath of the Earth〉 (2021, Yangpyeong Art Museum)
- Awards: Award of Excellence, 2nd Fukuoka Art Award (2024); selected long-term resident, Hongti Art Center (2026, Busan Cultural Foundation)
- Collections: Fukuoka Art Museum (2024), Goseong DMZ Museum (2018)
Three essays —
on the jar and the border
1〈Kimchi〉 — fermentation as identity
Kimchi is the most ordinary thing in a Korean home, and one of the most loaded. In Lee Hyeonjeong's 〈Kimchi〉 series, the fermented dish is not a still-life subject but a way of thinking about identity itself. Fermentation is slow, living transformation — a substance becoming more fully itself over time, in the dark, inside a sealed jar.
The subtitle of her 2022 CICA Museum solo exhibition, Kimchi_Breath, names the central image: breath held inside the jar. What ferments is not only cabbage but a culture — its memory, its habits, its sense of who it is. To open the lid is to release that accumulated time. The works ask what it means to be Korean not through symbols of nation but through the chemistry of an everyday thing.
She has carried this series from alternative spaces to the COEX exhibition halls — 〈Kimchi〉 (2019, Alternative Art Space IPO) and 〈GALLERIE LUTÈCE PRESENTS_Kimchi〉 (2024, COEX, Seoul) — keeping the same low, domestic material at the center of a sustained inquiry into Korean identity.
2The DMZ — peace as a sustained subject
In 2018, Lee Hyeonjeong was selected as an artist for the 〈DMZ Art Festa — Peace: Wind〉, held in conjunction with the PyeongChang Winter Olympics and Paralympics across the Goseong Unification Observatory, the DMZ Museum, Gwanghwamun Square, and Festival Park PyeongChang. From that point, the demilitarized zone became a recurring ground for her work.
The DMZ is a paradox: a strip of land emptied by division and, in that emptying, returned to wildness. Her engagement with it runs through a series of group exhibitions on division and its aftermath — 〈After the DMZ, Breath of the Earth〉 (2021, Yangpyeong Art Museum), the Changwon Sculpture Biennale Transborder Project (2022), and 〈80 Years of Liberation: DMZ International Art Exchange Project_Transborder〉 (2025, Goseong DMZ Museum · Unification Observatory).
Across these works, peace is not a slogan but a condition to be examined — the wind that crosses a border no person may cross, the breath of a land held in suspension. Her work entered the collection of the Goseong DMZ Museum in 2018.
3From Berlin to the DMZ — a borderless art
In 2023, Lee Hyeonjeong was invited to 〈UTOPIA?! PEACE〉, a project staged across Kunstraum Potsdam, the Berlin Wall Memorial at Bernauer Straße, and Babelsberg Palace in Germany. She was selected for the project by the Berlin Wall Foundation and Kunstraum Potsdam.
The site itself is the argument. Bernauer Straße is where the Berlin Wall ran directly between buildings, where a divided city's wound is most legible. To bring an artist of the Korean DMZ to that exact line is to set two divided histories side by side — one whose wall has fallen, one whose border still holds. Her transborder works ask what the fallen wall can teach the standing one.
This international dimension has continued: 〈FREEDOM 2023〉 at the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, the Kathmandu Contemporary Art Exhibition (2020, Nepal Art Council), and the recognition of the Fukuoka Art Award in 2024. From a sealed kimchi jar to a fallen wall, Lee Hyeonjeong's work keeps returning to the same question — how a border holds, and how it might be crossed.
A jar of kimchi and a strip of demilitarized land seem to have nothing in common — until you notice that both are spaces of suspended time, of a transformation held in waiting. Lee Hyeonjeong's work moves between them, from fermented identity to drawn-out borders, asking how a people becomes itself and how a division might one day be undone. She joins this campaign not as a subject of its cause but as a fellow artist in solidarity — so that those who come after might cross more easily the borders she has spent her work mapping.
Selected Works
3 works are featured here.
Lee Hyeonjeong joined this campaign in solidarity with fellow artists. Every work sold flows directly into the artists' mutual-aid loan fund— a purchase becomes the next month's lifeline for an artist navigating financial exclusion today.
