Kimin Kim’s practice explores the intersection of botanical symbolism, historical memory, and ritualized grief. Centering flowers as vessels of cultural memory and metaphors for mourning, his work engages with the complexities of Han, a Korean ethos of collective trauma, grief, and resilience. Through layered painting and drawing, Kim examines Han as both a lived experience and a historically shaped construct, challenging its colonial roots and role in shaping Korean ethnonational identity. Floral imagery serves as a metaphorical mediator between the material and immaterial, the individual and the collective. Rooted in the 20th-century Korean poetry, he transforms mark-making into a ritualistic act of mourning and longing for relief, drawing on flora’s role in funerary traditions, shamanic ceremonies, and ancestral rites.
Kimin Kim (b.1998) is a Korea-based painter currently living in Brooklyn, New York. He received his BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design. His work explores botanical symbolism, historical memory, and ritualized grief, using floral elements as symbolic vessels and ritual objects. Drawing from funerary traditions and ancestral rites, his practice reflects on how visual elements can function as metaphorical signifiers that culturally encode grief and mourning. Kim’s first solo show, Supulneol (Forestwaves), opened at Nua Gallery in Seoul in 2023, followed by No Leaf Will Be Shaken at Space 776 in New York in 2024. He is currently featured in multiple group exhibitions across New York.
