Hounyeh Kim
I was born severely nearsighted and have never experienced the world in sharp focus. Even after corrective lenses, my vision remained limited. I thought my perception of the world was simply incomplete.
It was much later that I realized my experience of sound was unusually physical. My father was sensitive, strict, and deeply irritated by noise. He played classical music all day to block sounds he could not tolerate. I learned to speak quietly and to pay close attention to shifts in atmosphere, tone, and reaction. For a long time, I thought every household was as silent as mine. Only after leaving home did I realize that I experienced sound differently. My hearing was not better, just… different.
Ironically, I became a visual artist rather than a musician or sound artist. As a child, being quiet was important. Reading and drawing were among the few things allowed. Fortunately, I loved drawing. But only recently did I begin to understand what exactly I loved about it. The scratching rhythm of graphite, the friction of repeated marks, and the resistance of surfaces became central to the way I process experience.
From a young age, I learned that what I said, did, made, or expressed often came less from myself than from trying to produce the correct reaction to specific situations. How not to upset anyone became the main purpose. I became highly reactive to external conditions. My sense of self began to feel unstable, constantly shifting according to surrounding signals and circumstances.
Drawing became a way to project this reactivity. It made it legible as a structure. Through repeated acts of drawing, I began to see response as a way the body organizes itself in relation to external conditions. What I had understood as “self” became more like a shifting pattern of contact, adjustment, and accumulated response.
Artist statement
My drawings begin with graphite moving across paper. A visual mark also produces sound, pressure, friction, and resistance. As marks accumulate, the surface changes. It becomes darker and smoother. The hand weakens. The sound shifts. Small differences in pressure and attention begin to shape the image.
This simple action allows me to observe how a body meets external conditions before forming a clear intention. It receives pressure, sound, and resistance, then responds through small adjustments. The drawing stays close to this exchange between stimulus and reaction.
I do not have a predetermined image or atmosphere. The drawing develops through the physical conditions of making. The drag of the surface, the density of accumulated graphite, the changing rhythm of the hand, the difficulty of maintaining consistency over time. These are not incidental. They become part of the structure of the work.
I use repetition to observe how sameness breaks down. Even when an action is repeated under controlled conditions, the body cannot reproduce itself exactly. An event can never occur exactly. Even under the exact restraints, my body and perception are never the same, and neither are any marks I make. The drawing records these small deviations as they accumulate.
The body in my work does not maintain merely as a container for thought or expression. The body is the main medium that functions as a responsive system. Even though my works may seem quiet, flat, or overly controlled, they are built from unstable exchanges between body, material, sound, and time.
Ambiguity is a material condition here. A drawing may appear calm from a distance, while up close it carries small shifts in density, direction, and touch. What the surface records and what the body senses while making it never fully align.
Drawing becomes a way to observe how perception reorganizes through contact, repetition, and accumulated response. Always active, never fully resolved, it leaves traces that the mind did not grasp.