Lucy Kim

MAKES AND BREAKS THE MOLD

BOSTON-BASED VISUAL ARTIST LUCY KIM PAINTS people, objects and animals on manipulated sculptural surfaces. Her hands-on approach of mold-making and casting expands vision into the realm of touch, gesturally recording each step in a unique image-making process. She focuses her work by being present and arrives with some interesting questions.

Todd Mazer: You combine different mediums in your work to create harmony as well as discord. Did coming from Seoul, South Korea and attending an American school in Yangon, Myanmar influence your sensibility and process? 

Lucy Kim: I had an incredible childhood marked by harsh differences existing side-by-side. Myanmar was very under-developed and in the early stages of infrastructure building. My family and I were part of a cluster of non- Myanmarese foreigners from all over the world who were there for diplomatic, military, or corporate reasons. Basically, there were these gated communities within a very raw, lush landscape. There weren’t a great deal of options in terms of schools, so my parents put me in this very small private American primary school that used U.S. textbooks, celebrated U.S. history, promoted a very U.S. oriented culture, so it was really at the center of all my learning, especially culturally. The pop culture coming out at the time—Michael Jackson, all those Molly Ringwald movies—was so alluring to me. Looking back, I see how odd my childhood was because I wasn’t a U.S. citizen then, and this wasn’t in the U.S.