SeungHee You
b. 1994, Seoul, South Korea
Live and works in South Korea
SeungHee You works with painting, sculpture, and text, focusing on human instability and contradiction, and on the impulse to weave these conditions into relationships and structures of order. This interest begins with the recognition that human beings are inherently unstable and contradictory, capable of holding opposing emotions and attitudes simultaneously. She further observes that such contradictions are not confined to the inner self, but continuously emerge within the principles and structures of the world that surround us.
Within this process, human anxiety gives rise to a fundamental impulse to generate meaning and construct structure. You gives concrete form to this impulse by exploring boundaries and by reconnecting the states of disassembly that emerge through this exploration.
Using everyday objects and fragile materials, her work engages with paradoxical boundaries such as part and whole, affirmation and negation, openness and closure. In this process, meanings and structures that once appeared fixed are deliberately dismantled. However, this dismantling is not intended as destruction; rather, it functions as a condition for reassembling scattered fragments into new relationships and structures.
Through this process, fragmented emotions, memories, and symbols do not converge into a single, fixed meaning. Instead, they form provisional orders at points where personal experience intersects and misaligns with the structures of the world. This approach goes beyond the deconstruction of meaning, seeking instead to reveal the process through which meaning is generated within the contradictions produced by humans and the world.
Through improvisation, collage-based structures, and non-academic drawing, You approaches contradiction not as a problem to be resolved, but as a condition in which humans and the world coexist. Beginning from the confusion and disorder that arise within her own experiences, she searches for order through artistic practice, thereby enacting a way of living alongside contradiction. Through this process, her work questions how humans form relationships and construct meaning within the fragmented conditions of the contemporary world, while proposing the possibility of continued connection and renewed balance even within instability.
Education
2022 Completed coursework for the Ph.D. in painting, Dongduk Women’s University, Seoul, Korea
2021 M.F.A. in sculpture, Kookmin University, Seoul, Korea
2019 B.F.A. in painting, Dongduk Women’s University, Seoul, Korea
Solo Exibitions
2020 A shape that originated from everyday life/ Ewha Womans University Seoul hospital_Wellness Art Zone, Seoul
2020 Inter Coursing : Movement of Space/ H.art Bridge, Seoul
2019 Sweet Home/ Seoul Art & Healing Hub_ Foundation for Arts and Culture, Seoul
Group Exhibitions
2023 Placeless Places/ Korea Cultural Center Washington, D.C., Washington D.C.
2023 Lucky Drawing/ Gallery Mint, Seoul
2021 Nine mouths Two ears/ online exhibition
2020 In the end, I wanted to say this_Invitation match for 3 people/ Bucheon Art Bunker B39, Bucheon
2019 Hidden Side/ Geumcheon Art Factory, Seoul
2019 It's empty, It's left/ Documenta in Yeomri-dong(’Seoul is Museum of Art’ project)
Awards 2023 Selection of OPEN CALL at the Korean Cultural Center in Washington_Group Exhibition Support/ Korea Cultural Center Washington, D.C, Washington D.C.
2020 Solo Exhibition Support/ Ewha Womans University Seoul hospital, Seoul
2019 Solo Exhibition Support/ Seoul Art & Healing Hub_ Foundation for Arts and Culture, Seoul
2019 The World of Quantum (Art Contest 2019)_Ewha University Center for Quantum Nanoscience, final round, Seoul