Young K. KIM
Korean Curatorial Team: Encounter VIII & Portfolio Review & International Photo Symposium Curator
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Young K. KIM is a visual artist and researcher who investigates photography as both a material medium and an ontological mode of being. Her practice engages with the sensory and technological conditions surrounding representation, expanding the boundaries of photography through both theoretical inquiry and formal experimentation. She studied photography at Bielefeld University, Chung-Ang University, and the Korea National University of Arts, and has since developed a body of work that transformed tensions between representational media into new narrative possibilities, beginning with her solo exhibition Notice of Commencement (2019).
She was awarded the 2024 SKOPF Artist of the Year (KT&G Sangsangmadang) and has introduced “Lazography,” a new photographic method emerging from her research into how technological advancement reshapes image generation. Currently an artist-in-residence at Incheon Art Platform, she explores image construction beyond ocular-centric representation, focusing on tactile modes of perception. Her ongoing series Flowing Earth (2019–) juxtaposes temporal disappearance and medial obsolescence precipitated by technological change, probing the sensory dimensions inherent in transformation.
She has served as curator for the 7th Busan International Photo Festival and as coordinator for the 5th Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism. As a director overseeing large-scale documentation initiatives including UNESCO World Heritage photographic archives and national forest documentation projects, she has led diverse archiving practices that weave together image and collective memory. Her work continues to examine how photography, platforms, and archives function as mediating spaces that shape identity and modes of existence, generating multilayered responses that traverse theory and practice.
