From Painting to AI Design: Park Jihye's Crossing Doctorates

An artist who studied fine arts in France and completed a PhD in painting at Hongik. In 2024, Park Jihye began a second doctorate in AI Design at Kookmin.

Park Jihye, Intersection of Memory, Speed, and Information, 2025, Digital print, 60x60cm

Park Jihye is an artist walking toward two doctorates at once.

From 2015 to 2025, she completed her PhD in Fine Arts at Hongik University Graduate School (Department of Painting). And in March 2024, the year before finishing that doctorate, she entered the PhD program at Kookmin University's AI Design Lab at the Graduate School of Techno Design. Currently, Ph.D. Candidate.

Painting and AI design. The brush and the algorithm overlap within one person's academic history. The title of her SAF 2026 submission, Intersection of Memory, Speed, and Information, seems to speak of this overlap directly.

From Le Havre–Rouen to Hongik

Park Jihye's academic path begins in France.

From September 2007 to June 2010, she majored in fine arts at L'École Supérieure d'Art et Design Le Havre–Rouen in France, receiving her Bachelor's degree (DNAP). Le Havre is a port city where Impressionist painters stayed for long stretches. There, the artist laid the foundation of her painting.

After returning home, she completed her M.F.A. in Painting at Hongik University Graduate School (2013–2015), and entered the same institution's PhD program (2015–2025). From 2024, just before earning her doctorate, she began a second doctoral program at Kookmin University's Graduate School of Techno Design.

Paris, Daejeon, Hongik

During her time in France, she showed painting, installation, and video works in various French spaces. In 2008, 2009, and 2010 at ESAH Gallery (France). 2009 Bouger at Theater France. 2010 Art and Nature (installation) at Jardin suspendu au Havre. 2009–2010 Art, Architecture with Nature, a workshop with architect Jean Louis.

After returning, her solo exhibitions in Korea continued.

2013·2014 Passing, Passage (Gallery Seven, Hangaram Art Museum at Seoul Arts Center)
2013·2015 Art Seoul, Art and Life Show (Seoul Arts Center, aT Center)
2014 MFA thesis exhibition (Hongik University Museum of Contemporary Art)
2014 Passing at Art Seoul (Hangaram Art Museum)
2024 Visual Dialogue (Hongik University Museum of Contemporary Art)

Group exhibitions are consistent. 2024 80 Asian Young Artists at Sejong Center, 2024 Herald Arcade 15 (12 Artists) at Herald Auction, 2023 Hanam Fringe Art Fair, 2025 Reloaded (Dapsimni Art Lab, Korea Media Art Association).

Drawing, Erasing, Stacking

The artist's own explanation of her practice:

"Through the repetitive process of drawing, erasing, and stacking objects, I discover forms that emerge accidentally or intentionally, and I restructure them in my own way. In this process, the physical gap between the divided screen and the canvas allows the work a unique visual experience, and the work's meaning is not fixed — it presupposes fluid generation. The work aims at an open possibility, where new forms and meanings endlessly circulate and reconfigure, unbound to any specific meaning."

"Draw, erase, stack." These three verbs are the grammar of Park Jihye's work. The grammar holds even after the shift to AI design research. Only now, algorithms and data join the "stacking."

The Image of the Foot, the Record of Movement

"In early works, I expressed the absence of fixed meaning in objects through people's movement. Now, I explore this concept through the image of the 'foot.'"

A gaze that narrows from the whole body to the foot. A reduction that keeps only the part touching the ground. A paradox in which that reduction, rather, opens up the possibility of meaning. The choice of digital print as medium flows naturally within this current.

y&b drawing

y&b drawing — a drawing in yellow and blue

Park Jihye submitted two works to SAF 2026.

Intersection of Memory, Speed, and Information — Digital print, 60×60cm, 2025
y&b drawing — Digital print, 40×60cm, 2025

The title Intersection of Memory, Speed, and Information summarizes Park Jihye's double doctorate as is. The "memory" painting handles, the "speed" the digital world demands, the "information" AI design processes. The point where these three cross is the artist's present. y&b drawing is simpler. y (yellow) and b (blue). A drawing in two primary colors.

Two Doctorates, One Solidarity

84.9% of Korean artists are excluded from institutional finance. Sales of works by SAF-exhibiting artists build a mutual-aid fund that returns as low-interest loans to fellow artists facing financial discrimination.

A double doctorate demands considerable time and resources. Through that long academic stretch, the artist must still live as an artist. SAF's fund quietly supports the livelihood of artists who must endure the long time between degree and practice. Park Jihye's submission of two works to SAF is, in a sense, her own first declaration of solidarity with that long time.

At the Intersection

The road from painting to AI design, from France back to Korea, from canvas to digital print.

Park Jihye's résumé sits at many intersections. That she continues the act of "drawing, erasing, stacking" at those intersections may be the most essential evidence of her practice.