Yeesookyung

based in Seoul, Korea  

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Yeesookyung has steadily expanded the scope of her practice across a wide range of media – including installation, sculpture, performance, video, painting, and drawing – guided by a richly imaginative narrative sensibility. Her work explores fundamental human questions, navigating themes such as the past and present, life and death, reality and illusion, the sacred and the secular, the individual and the collective, and the interplay between systems and societies, as well as between different cultures. Drawing from personal experience and inspired by ancient mythologies and traditional stories, she has established a distinct and expansive artistic universe.

 

Yeesookyung’s work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at major institutions worldwide, including Yeesookyung: Temple portatif at Musée Cernuschi, Paris, France (2023); Moonlight Crowns at Art Sonje Center, Seoul, Korea (2021); The Story of a Girl Named Long Journey at Buk-Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea (2021); Whisper Only to You at MDRE & Capodimonte Museum, Naples, Italy (2019); Saint Breeder at Atelier Hermès, Seoul, Korea (2015); and When I Become You: Yeesookyung in Taipei at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, Taiwan (2015). She also participated in major group exhibitions such as the 57th Venice Biennale VIVA ARTE VIVA, exhibiting at the Arsenale (2017), to which she was invited by curator Christine Macel; Monstrous Beauty, curated by Iris Moon, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (2025); and Whispers on the Horizon: The Taipei Biennial 2025 at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan (2025). She was honored with the 44th Sejong Culture Award in the Culture, Arts, and Humanities category in recognition of her contributions to promoting Korean art and traditional music in the Middle East by participating as a Korean artist in the 1st Abu Dhabi Public Art Biennale (2024).

 

Her works are held in major international museum collections, including the British Museum (London, UK); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles, USA); Seoul Museum of Art (Seoul, Korea); Salama Bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation (Abu Dhabi, UAE); M+ Museum (Hong Kong); Mystetskyi Arsenal (Kyiv, Ukraine); Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, USA); National Museum of Contemporary Art (Gwacheon, Korea); Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art (Seoul, Korea); ARCO Collection, IFEMA (Madrid, Spain); Bristol Museum (Bristol, UK); and the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, USA).