Cindy Ji Hye Kim

Cindy Ji Hye Kim is a Canadian-Korean painter, who concocts disturbing domestic scenes. In her signature grayscale palette, Kim works with a mixture of oils, acrylics, inks and graphite to create her large-scale works. She has developed a host of three recurring characters within her paintings; Mister Capital, Madam Earth and schoolgirl, these figures undergo and inflict violent acts in the supposed comfort of the home. Mutant SPAM tins cause havoc, rats run riot or ironing chords contort and maim the female figures as they undergo their domestic errands. The horror that unfolds between these stereotypical markers of patriarchy, domesticity and capitalism speaks to the infiltration of these forces within our daily lives. Building on her background in animation and illustration, these tableaux are delivered in a cartoonlike register, cropped awkwardly like strips within a comic, or freeze frames within a film. Kim has spoken about the subversive capacity of cartoon imagery, and its ability to really push the limits of the grotesque in a way that ‘fine art’ media cannot. This graphic approach links her work to artists such as Roy Lichenstein, or Tala Madani and Ebecho Muslimova, who similarly mobilise illustrative registers to deftly examine the restrictions placed upon women’s bodies. Simultaneously magnetic and repulsive, Kim’s paintings demand the viewer’s attention.