Nam Kim (b. 1991) is an American-born Korean artist living and working in Vienna. Nam attended Ewha Womens University in Seoul from 2010 to 2015 and earned her Bachelor degree of fine arts (painting) and art history. Between 2017 and 2023 she studied with Professor Kirsi Mikkola and Alastair Mackinven in Academy of fine arts Vienna.

In the ceaseless time of looking at Kim’s oeuvre, it is hard to escape from her figurative yet abstractly gazing human beings. In order to emancipate herself from the historical discourse of figurative expressionism, Kim’s artistic language has developed from the visual imagination of abstract figures. It combines figurative realisation of uncovered yet demonstrative bodies with abstractly sketched components from her understanding of human beings with unfinished narratives. Her appreciation of human beings forms its own artistic semiotics, such as the combination of human bodies with natural patterns or fragments from the abstract backgrounds of each painting.

The intercultural complexity visually revealed on Kim’s painting with certain iconography and humorous approach in Minwha and religious art in the Middle Ages in Europe. Initially, after her relocation to Vienna, Kim tried to inscribe her intercultural knowledge of Korean and European art history into her painting, placing the individual people in a painting that is freed from a certain supposition of iconography. In Minwha, the central protagonists are visibly connected to the title of the painting, but at the same time the other people around the corner seem tangential to the title. Kim found a common allegory in religious paintings of medieval art, which depict masses of people humorously around Christian symbols or figures.

Across South Korea, USA, and Austria - where Kim was born, grew up, and built her own habitat - her Weltanschauung was established with intensely shifting environments in her daily life. Starting from a confusing entry into the new culture and social circles, Kim came to a deep-rooted acceptance of each other’s extraordinary attributes, cultural backgrounds and intersectional identities. Through her own artistic statement, with the dictum of indifferent differences, Kim discernibly demonstrates against the arbitrary hegemony based on imperialistic logic. This is the cogent reason why her political manifesto in her work fundamentally
approaches our current social challenges and uncertainties.