claudia yeejae kim
Bio: claudia yeejae Kim (b. Seoul, Korea) is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily in performance, sculpture, video, and installation, who uses vulnerability to examine the absurdity and inadequacies in beauty standards. Her work has been exhibited at The Jewish Museum, Fredric Snitzer Gallery, theBLANC Gallery, and Wallach Gallery among others. She received her BA from the University of California, Davis and a Post-Baccalaureate from Brandeis University. She is currently an MFA candidate at Columbia University in the City of New York.
yeejaekim.com
Instagram @mynameisnot_yee
Thesis Exhibition
Artist Statement: Through sculpture and performance. I examine beauty standards and their pervasive colorism through my upbringing in South Korea. My childhood was marked by relentless efforts to lighten my natural skin tone. I vividly remember my grandmother’s ritual of scrubbing the 때 (dirt or dark tone) from my skin using a loofah mitt with an exfoliant of milk, yogurt, hon- ey, and egg at a Korean bathhouse. Even the women there scrutinized my complex- ion for a “lighter” appearance, and I sadly internalized this treatment. My current work finds absurdity in my ob- session with beauty standards, self-objecti- fication, and fetishization from others. Specifically, I examine bathhouses and gyms as temples of beauty, where companionship, competition, self-healing, and self-destruction occur. Performing the absurdity of these places strips power from both. Banner stands connect these spaces, and often feature images of women’s cropped body parts without faces. I recreate these banner stands as bodies, repeating their grommets and instead puncturing a peachy synthetic flesh-tone spandex, symbolizing the violence needed to achieve an impossibly manufactured aesthetic. My art invites viewers to private worlds rooted in personal traumas. Ultimately, using my anger, discomfort, and vulnerability, I imagine absurd realities to decon- struct power structures, and challenge societal norms.
Claudia Yeejae Kim
happy factory, 2024
Rubber, silicone, polyurethane foam, cement, cable wire, pulley, stainless steel carabiner, eyehook, aircraft aluminum, electric motor, power supply, fan, and PVC fabric
Courtesy of the artist
&
the woman (series), 2024
Exfoliation wash cloth, upholstery foam, wood, and electric motor
Courtesy of the artist
First Year Exhibition
claudia yeejae kim
Happy Towel Costume, 2023
Korean loofah mitten, threads, and heels
63 "x 24" x 2"
Courtesy the artist
