Meet the Artist
Stories behind the artists and their works
Behind every artwork is a life of decisions. SAF 2026 brings together 213 Korean artists who chose to put their work into a mutual-aid campaign for fellow artists. Their interviews, studio notes, and reflections give you the context that turns a passing glance into a lasting connection with a piece.
Korean contemporary artist interviews often live behind academic prose. The SAF magazine asks simpler questions in the artists’ own words, so first-time visitors can build a real sense of who made the work — and why.
Every featured artist is a “solidarity artist”: they donated work knowing the proceeds would fund low-interest loans for peers excluded from primary banking (84.9% of Korean artists). Their stories are personal, but they also reveal the structural reality of Korean art-making.
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Stories in this category
Ko Mi-kyung: Rewriting the Korean Letter Painting in Flowers
Ko Mi-kyung rebuilds the iconography of Korean folk painting for a contemporary eye. A guide to her practice and the two works she has placed in the Seed Art Festival.
Kim Gi-yeong: The Bear on Korean Paper
Kim Gi-yeong paints teddy bears in mixed pigments on Korean jangji paper. A close reading of the artist’s own notes and the three works at Seed Art Festival.
Jung Myoung-guk: The Printmaker Who Rubs Cars onto Paper
Jung Myoung-guk has spent decades rubbing life-size cars onto paper with frottage. A guide to his practice and the silkscreen print he has placed in the Seed Art Festival.
Jeong Chan-min: Drawing with a Blade, a Master Woodblock Engraver
Gakja is the craft of carving letters and images into wood. Jeong Chan-min, a certified successor of this national intangible heritage, has carved sutra blocks and the names of disaster victims alike. A guide to his five woodblocks at Seed Art Festival.
Park Hyun-jung: Riding a Car Made of Candy
A pink candy car, a child buried in blossoms. Park Hyun-jung lets only sweet and bright things into her paintings, and what she puts there is a wish. A guide to her three works at Seed Art Festival.
Shin Hyun-kyoung: From Painted Diary to Bulyeon-giyeon, Landscapes Seen from Between
Trained in Korean ink painting and holding a doctorate in art education, Shin Hyun-kyoung has long called her work a painted diary. Her three recent works layer torn gold and silver leaf over mulberry paper to picture what has cracked and bent.
Yang Woonchul: Two Skies in Lacquer, and What Only Facing Reveals
Trained in religious art and philosophy, Yang Woonchul reduces his canvases to circles and squares in lacquer and oil. A guide to a painter who has spent two decades on a single idea: that things become visible only when two face each other.
Jang Yun-seo: Dots Borrowed from a Color Blindness Test
Jang Yun-seo builds familiar images from thousands of small circles so that the form never quite resolves, a method borrowed from color blindness test plates. A close reading of her two works at Seed Art Festival.
Namkung San: Thirty Years of Bookplates, the Smallest Prints in Korea
A woodcut artist who began in the thick of Minjung art in 1987 has spent three decades carving the lives of book owners into palm-sized blocks. A guide to Namkung San, who introduced the bookplate to Korea.
Jung Chae-hee: Coat, Inlay, Sand Down — The Honesty Lacquer Demands
Trained in Western painting and mural art in Beijing, Jung Chae-hee has worked in Korean lacquer for over two decades. A guide to why she chose a material that permits no shortcuts.
Lee Jong-chul: Back to the Copper Plate After Thirty Years
After decades in photography, video and LED media art, Lee Jong-chul has returned to the copper plate. A guide to his new etching series Sunshower and his work at Seed Art Festival.
Ko Ja-young: A Garden That Keeps Moving, and the Figure Fading Inside It
Ko Ja-young has explored the self and the order of the world through plants and gardens. A guide to her Mobile Garden series and the work she has placed in the Seed Art Festival.
Lee Chae-won: The Unfinished Things, and a Flame Left Burning in the Kitchen
Painter Lee Chae-won, trained in Baltimore, paints some things solid and leaves others as bare outline. A reading of her Seed Art Festival work through her own writing and the canvas itself.
Lee Oh-yeon: Tending Alley Gardens, Painting the Square
For 35 years in Suwon, Lee Oh-yeon has made community art in alleyways and painted the square. A guide to her work and the three paintings she has placed in the Seed Art Festival.
Salnus: A Painter Who Looks Long at the Grotesque
Salnus places glass beads, distorted bodies and geometric structures side by side in red. A guide to her paintings and the work she has placed in the Seed Art Festival.
Hwang Ui-seon: Imagining the Animals and Plants of a Vanished Landscape
Hwang Ui-seon paints the animals and plants that once lived in places now replaced by buildings. A guide to two works at the Seed Art Festival, both from the Memory of Space series.
Park Shin-young: A Night Sky in Lacquer, the Crescent Moon in Mother-of-Pearl
Park Shin-young paints with ottchil, Korean lacquer, building night skies through repeated coating and sanding, then setting a crescent moon in mother-of-pearl. A reading of her two works at Seed Art Festival.
Kim Dong-seok: Thirty Years from a Single Seed
Kim Dong-seok has glued peach seeds onto canvas for thirty years, working through three motifs: the path, the mother's earth, and the seed. His two works at the Seed Art Festival are both titled after the fable of the foolish old man who moved a mountain.
Shim Hyun-hee: From Rice Paper to Buttons, Forty Years of Flowers and Faces
Born in Masan in 1958 and trained in ink on rice paper at Seoul National University, Shim Hyun-hee now paints in acrylic on canvas and glues buttons onto the surface. A guide to a painter who kept changing both medium and subject.
Lee Kyung-a: A Paper Boat That Left the Frame
Lee Kyung-a, long active in Suwon, builds childhood paper boats and carousels in mixed media — and her paper boat sits outside the round frame, not inside it. A reading of her two works at Seed Art Festival.
Kwon Hyejung: A Printmaker Who Engraves Monologues
Kwon Hyejung engraves copper plates into scenes where people, animals and plants touch. A guide to her Monologue series and the print she has placed in the Seed Art Festival.
Lee Eun-ju: Hanging a Bandaji on the Wall, on Fluorescent Acrylic Legs
Lee Eun-ju repaints the brass fittings of a Pyongyang bandaji chest in fluorescent line and replaces its wooden legs with clear acrylic panels. A reading of her BAN series through her own writing and the paintings themselves.
Byun Kyung-hee: Each Dot a Confession of Being Alive
Byun Kyung-hee lays her canvas flat and builds each dot until it rises from the surface and casts its own shadow. A guide to her practice and two works at Seed Art Festival.
OH AH: Mineral Pigment on Jangji, Reading the Psyche in a Face
OH AH paints contemporary faces with traditional Korean mineral pigments on jangji paper. A guide to her portraits, her symbols, and the work she has placed in the Seed Art Festival.
Total 195 stories
Frequently asked questions
Q. Who are the SAF artists?
SAF 2026 brings together 110+ Korean contemporary artists across painting, print, photography, sculpture, and digital art — from emerging artists to recognized masters. All voluntarily contributed works to address financial discrimination against fellow artists.
Q. Who conducts the artist interviews?
The SAF magazine editorial team meets each artist directly. We aim to reduce the formal distance of museum catalogs and academic writing, letting the artists describe their practice and daily studio life in their own words.
Q. How can I buy work by a specific artist I read about?
Click the artist name in the interview to reach the artist page. All available works, biography, and other magazine features are gathered there — and any work can be purchased directly. SAF is artist-direct: no gallery markup.
Q. Does the artist actually receive the proceeds?
The majority of sales proceeds go directly to the artist. A portion contributes to the artist mutual-aid fund, providing low-interest loans (5% APR, 95% repayment rate) to artists facing financial discrimination. One purchase supports both an artist and the broader Korean art ecosystem.
Q. How often are new artist interviews published?
New interviews are added at a pace of 1–2 per month. Recent additions appear at the top of the magazine and category pages. RSS and newsletter subscriptions are available.
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213 artists, artworks available online.