Joeun Kim Aatchim

Joeun Kim Aatchim (b. 1989) records and translates memories and emotions through a diverse range of media, including drawing, painting, writing, etching, audio-video formats, and installation. She collects fleeting gazes and spatial experiences, layering them onto translucent surfaces to weave essays of perception and recovery. The concept of “drafts”—encompassing initial stages, intermediate phases, and yet-to-be-defined states—serves as a core element of her practice. It functions as a tool for documentation and reconciliation, becoming a source for various artistic explorations that bridge fiction and nonfiction, as well as the visual and auditory. Centered on themes such as illness and trauma, reconciliation and healing, and identity and conditions of life, her work is deeply rooted in personal experience and expands into a comprehensive, self-reflective practice that engages with life as a whole. Currently based in New York, Joeun Kim Aatchim received a BFA in Studio Art from New York University, followed by an MFA in Visual Art from Columbia University. Recent solo exhibitions include Virgin Thoughts , Travesía Cuatro, Madrid (2025); Red Ribbon , François Ghebaly, New York (2025); Minimally Invasive (최소침습), Gladstone Gallery, Seoul (2024); Old Habit Theater , Travesía Cuatro, Guadalajara (2024); Sheer Painer , François Ghebaly, Los Angeles (2023); 사자굴 [Sajagul]—Then, out of the Den , Make Room, Los Angeles (2022); Can Day See Me? , Harper’s, East Hampton (2021), among others. She has received fellowships at Yaddo (2023), Triangle Art Association (2021), Lighthouse Works (2021), Foundation for Contemporary Arts (2019), The Drawing Center (2018-20), and Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture (2017). Recently, her work was featured in the 2025 Taipei Biennial.