Karmadise, Where Good Karma Gathers: Lee Yuji's Shelter of Wishes

Lee Yuji names her practice *Karmadise* — karma plus paradise. Resting places where wishes take root, light passing through forest branches.

Lee Yuji, Resting Place Holding Light, 2026, oil on canvas, 53×40.9 cm

Lee Yuji names her practice Karmadise.

A compound of karma and paradise. A journey of accumulating good karma through the power of wish, overcoming and reaching release. On her canvases, resting places appear again and again. A seat where inner longings rest and are cleansed. And a point of departure toward light once more.

At Museoljeon, Jeondeungsa on Ganghwa

In 2025, Lee Yuji was selected for the Seoun Gallery open call at Museoljeon, Jeondeungsa, Ganghwa, and held her Karmadise solo. The same year, Where Wishes Rest and Rise Again at Art Boda Gallery, Seoul — an invitational solo. Exhibition titles read like her practice manifesto.

A graduate of Suwon University (Western painting), she held her 2015 MA thesis exhibition Facing Anxiety at Kookmin Art Gallery. In 2017, selected for the Cyart Document open call with Landscape of the Abyss. In 2024, the Eunpyeong Cultural Foundation Sai open call selection Dreamer's Paradise (Eunpyeong Cultural Foundation) and the invitational solo Party of Wishes (The Squares Gallery) continued.

Sanctuary of Wishes

Lee Yuji, Resting Place Where the Light of Wishes Takes Root, 2026, oil on canvas, 60.6×60.6 cm

Resting Place Where the Light of Wishes Takes Root — where wishes take root

For Lee Yuji, wish is not prayer or longing but "a latent energy and a primal force that draws healing moments." A force invisible yet clearly at work. She explores that force in the language of painting.

Her resting-place series holds recollection, hope, and purification. A point of light rising in the middle of a dark-colored forest, transparent light spilling through branches, a place of wish rooted firmly like roots. The image is closer to a private utopia the artist makes herself than a Christian sanctuary or a Buddhist meditation hall.

Official Recognition and Collections

In 2024, Lee Yuji received the Excellence Award at Gyeomjae Jeong Seon Museum's Artist of Tomorrow open call. The same year, an Encouragement Prize at the Jeju Art Exhibition. That year her work Self, Bloomed in the Wetland — Flower of the Abyss was acquired by Gyeomjae Jeong Seon Museum.

In 2020 Forest of the Abyss 2 was acquired by Seoul Cultural Headquarters Museum; in 2016 Red Room by Hana Bank Art Bank. Fair and individual-collector acquisitions continue.

In 2026 she enters the Chuncheon Cultural Foundation's Chuncheon Art Village 4th residency.

Healing Pharmacy and Art Peddler

Lee Yuji's practice doesn't end with exhibitions.

In 2025, through the Korea Arts & Culture Education Service's Healing Like Spring program, she conducted sessions for seniors with dementia at Eunpyeong Nae-Gon-Geon-Neoseo Library. In October that year, she ran the Wish Relic Workshop at the Suwon Festival Healing Pharmacy, and the Bibbidi-Bobbidi art-peddler workshop at Seoul's Myeongdong Babjip One Meal of Art. Practicing the themes of healing and wish outside the studio, too.

Resting Place at SAF

Lee Yuji contributes three works to SAF.

As of SAF's opening, Resting Place Holding Light has already sold.

84.9% of Korean artists are excluded from institutional finance. Sales of works by SAF-exhibiting artists cycle into a mutual-aid fund, returning as low-interest loans to fellow artists.

The resting places the artist built on canvas become physical commas at SAF. Time to move toward the next work, free from overdue-rent worries. The artist's Karmadise becomes a peer artist's real release.

Where Good Karma Accumulates

Karma is originally Sanskrit for action. The belief that good action accumulates into good outcome.

When Lee Yuji's resting place hangs on someone's wall, the painting works twice. It rests the viewer's heart and pays an unknown artist's rent. A place where good karma accumulates. That is 2026's Karmadise.