Yula Kim
Artist | Painter
Yula Kim (b.1996, South Korea) is a London-based artist, who employs her Third Cultural identity of expression to portray the connection between human cultures and nature through birds and their histories.
As a Third Culture Kid, Yula grew up in Asia (South Korea, China), Polynesia (Hawaii), Africa (Uganda), and Europe (The United Kingdom). These diverse environments have given her ample cultural and environmental experiences to draw upon in her artwork.
Yula's inter-continental life has stimulated her ability to see the inherent aesthetics of nature, enlightened her gaze and helped her consider the significance of nature in individual lives, and society, as a whole.
She offers a diverse viewpoint in her artwork as she describes the relationships between human desire, cultures and the natural environment.
Photography by Claire Ward.
Artist Statement
Yula is a painter who uses lines, figurative and abstract shapes based on nature and urban spaces, vivid colours, and space to express her Third Cultural gaze to see our society and our connection to nature. She endeavours to state the cultural hybrid of considering the role of nature and its creatures in today's society in relation to civilisation and the philosophy of aesthetics as well as its influence on the intellectuality in human cultural development . Then, she uses her visual inspirations from birds in different geographies and narrates a new cultural viewpoint to paint a new concept of territory and reveal philosophical and aesthetic connections between human cultures across the world and nature.
Yula's artworks have been presented in some significant exhibitions including the Platinum Jubilee Collection at Kensington Council and the Tate Modern in Late March 2023. Then, her painting has been chosen to celebrate His Majesty's Coronation and will be digitally presented at Windsor Castle during the Coronation Concert on the 7th of May, 2023.
Yula have received her Master Degree of Contemporary Art Practice (Public Sphere) at the Royal College of Art in 2023 with distinction award for her dissertation, and she had previously studied BA Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London. Yula is currently continuing her art practices, and taking a research degree in MA Museums and Galleries in Education at University College London.
