Yooyeon Nam

Yooyeon Nam is a Korean born, New York based oil painter. Her works through her characters explore the weird nature of the world, where we are disconnected from each other within our own community. Through her work she investigates what it is to be an outsider in both her own culture and the chosen culture. The eerie discomfort is further evoked through the usage of a wide array of colors and mysterious narratives. By depicting her characters as overly cute and adorable to suffer or be violent, she accentuates the sense of uncanniness, paradoxically intensifying the seriousness of her narratives.

Nam’s child-like, round-faced, nose-less characters reflect both her personal sense of displacement and her cultural heritage. These figures, with their blank face and pupil-less eyes, look downwards, echoing Korean cultural norms where direct eye contact and overt emotional expression are considered impolite. This cultural difference posed challenges for Nam in environments where direct eye contact is expected. She combines her personal sense of alienation with her longstanding admiration for Korean Buddha sculptures, which are pupil-less and often depicted with downcast eyes to create a sense that they are observing the viewer. She is drawn to the Buddha sculptures because they are celebrated for their idealized body forms, though they are not anatomically accurate, which mirrors her effort to make her work believable, even though it originates from her imagination. Furthermore, these sculptures possess an inherent mystery, capturing a moment that might be just before or just after enlightenment.