Under the Persimmon Tree
Acrylic on Polyfoam, Printed Paper, Wooden Frame
Variable dimensions
2025

Under the Persimmon Tree
Acrylic on Polyfoam, Printed Paper
Variable dimensions
2025

do you have a key?
Acrylic on Polyfoam
Variable dimensions
2024

Structural Framing (wood detail)
reclaimed joists, plywood, subfloor and linoleum scraps, cast pewter levelers and spacers, salvaged plexiglass
variable dimensions
2025

Personification of an Unidentifiable Word IV
oil on linen
91 x 117 cm
2024

Nayeon Kim

Nayeon Kim is a Korean artist whose practice investigates materiality, perception, and temporality through sculpture and installation. Her early works focused on participatory art, encouraging audiences to physically engage with transforming materials to experience the passage of time. In recent years, her practice has shifted toward a more introspective examination of how meanings attached to everyday materials evolve over time and become embedded with memory.

She received her BFA from Sookmyung Women’s University in Seoul in 2022. Her current work explores the subtle dynamics between material decay and emotional resonance, using sculptural forms to navigate the blurred space between physical presence and perceptual disappearance.

My work begins with a question: how do we remember, and how does that act of remembering transform the objects and spaces around us? Memory is not linear, nor is it fixed—it is fluid, fragmented, and perpetually restructured by our present emotional states and sensory perceptions.

In my installation practice, I explore the shifting layers of perception by using overlapping textures, eroded surfaces, and sculptural fragments. These material decisions act as metaphors for how memory accumulates, fades, and reforms. I am particularly drawn to domestic objects and architectural elements—wallpaper, wooden frames, outlines of furniture—not for their literal function, but for the ways in which they carry the residue of lived experience.

My recent project, Under the Persimmon Tree, is based on my grandmother’s home in Gangneung, Korea. Rather than expressing nostalgia, the work traces how memory reconstructs space through time. The persimmon tree in the yard becomes a symbolic anchor—a seasonal marker that transforms into something more elusive and abstract with emotional distance. By inviting viewers into this fragmented environment, I hope to evoke a space where personal and collective memories may overlap, contradict, or dissolve.