Jeongsoon Oum

OUM Jeongsoon (1961-) explores new possibilities of perception through her collaborations with visually impaired individuals. Since founding the non-profit art lab ‘ Another Way of Seeing ’ in 1996, she has pursued a sustained inquiry into the origins and essence of vision. This has resulted in a diverse body of work encompassing sculpture, painting, and publication. Her life-sized elephant sculptures, The Elephant without Trunk , emerged from this conceptual shift. By presenting an elephant devoid of its most iconic feature—the trunk—the work compels viewers to confront the collapse of familiar perceptual frameworks and to question the assumptions that underpin our ways of seeing. From the void left by the absent form, fundamental questions begin to surface. OUM’s efforts to subvert conventional modes of perception and to engage with non-human beings are also evident in her drawings and paintings. She contends that only by relinquishing anthropocentric perspectives can we begin to perceive the myriad forms of communication that have long eluded human awareness. By giving visual and material form to sensory exchanges that transcend human cognition, her practice seeks to recover a fundamental and universal gaze—one that reconsiders the status of all beings while challenging the ableist and human-centred structures of contemporary society. OUM Jeoungsoon was born in Chungju, Korea. She received her BFA in Painting from Ewha Womans University and later earned her MFA in Painting at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste München, Munich, Germany. She subsequently served as a professor in the Department of Painting at the College of Arts, Konkuk University, Seoul, Korea. Since 1996, she has founded and directed the non-profit organization Our Eyes, through which she has carried out a wide range of projects related to art education, including art programs for schools for the visually impaired, as well as publications, exhibitions, art projects, and educational initiatives. Her solo exhibitions include 《Fuzz - Tangible Incident》 (2026, Hakgojae Gallery, Seoul, Korea), 《SIGNAL ON SALE: the folds of time》 (2025, Hakgojae Gallery, Seoul, Korea), 《Elephant in swing》 (2024, Duson Gallery, Seoul, Korea), and 《Elephant Walk》 (2015, Anthracite, Seoul, Korea). Selected group exhibitions include 《 Ten Eyes》 (2025, Busan Museum of Contemporary Art, Busan, Korea), 《 I Thought It Was Lost!》 (2024, Hakgojae Gallery, Seoul, Korea), 《 Soft and Gentle Like Water》 (2023, Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, Korea), and 《 Unfolding the Elephant’s Wrinkles》 (2015, Buk-Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea; Gyeongnam Art Museum, Changwon, Korea; Blume Museum of Art, Paju, Korea). Her works are held in the collections of the National Museum of Contemporary Art (Gwacheon), National Folk Museum of Korea (Seoul), Seoul Museum of Art (Seoul), Samsung Culture Foundation (Seoul), Seoul Arts Center (Seoul).