Between lines and breath

Mina Kim emphasizes the irreplaceable power of the human hand. Her twisting, knotting, and weaving transforms wire and everyday materials into meditative, large-scale forms that span sculpture, painting, and installation. Her work is a quiet but persistent assertion of endurance, craft, and human presence in an increasingly automated world.

Together alongside Elsie Kagan's exhibit, the drop falls, these exhibitions spark conversation about technology, AI, and the enduring value of touch and process — while filling the Gallery with work that is both immersive and thought-provoking. Visitors will move between Elsie’s fluid, AI-informed landscapes and Mina’s tactile, hand-wrought forms, encountering two very different but deeply resonant explorations of contemporary life.

Artist Mina Kim twists wire. Again. Again. Again. Thousands of times until her hands ache and a porous structure emerges—something between shelter and cage. This repetitive, meditative labor became a method of thinking when language proved insufficient: first as a Korean woman raised to stay quiet, and later as an immigrant in America expected to be loud.

She is a multidisciplinary artist working across installation, sculpture, and painting. Born in Seoul and now based in New York, Mina uses modest materials drawn from domestic life—thin wire salvaged from her father’s garage and plastic twist-ties from her mother’s kitchen drawer—to build intricate, hand-formed structures. Her practice centers on repetition, endurance, and the slow accumulation of time, asking how sustained bodily action can generate form without predetermined design.

Her process is labor-intensive and improvisational. Rather than planning a final shape in advance, she twists, binds, and accumulates material over extended periods—sometimes for months— allowing form to emerge gradually through sustained physical engagement. Through this practice, duration itself becomes material.

Growing up in Korea, Mina was raised within a social framework that emphasized conformity, restraint, and silence. Visibility was something to manage rather than express. After immigrating alone to the United States in her early twenties, she encountered a contrasting set of expectations: to speak assertively, self-promote, and compete. Navigating these pressures—often with limited language—placed her in a prolonged state of in-betweenness. This tension between restraint and visibility continues to shape how she thinks about space, structure, and presence.

Earlier works took the form of small-scale sculptures that functioned as grounding objects. Over time, this practice expanded into room-sized installations that invite collective encounter. Installed from floor to ceiling, her structures respond directly to architectural conditions, often wrapping around or pressing against walls. They cast shadows that blur distinctions between sculpture and drawing, creating environments that viewers move through rather than simply observe.

Across her installations and paintings, the artist aims to create spaces where quiet labor, memory, and human-scale time become visible. Working slowly and often in relative isolation allows meaning to emerge without urgency—through repetition, touch, and sustained presence.

Mina Kim is a multidisciplinary artist based in New York, working across installation, sculpture, and painting. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Fine Arts (Installation & Sculpture) at the School of Visual Arts, New York, and holds a BFA (Honors) in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts.

Kim’s practice centers on repetition, endurance, and sustained bodily labor as a way of generating form and meaning. Using modest, domestic materials, she constructs intricate, hand built structures that hover between shelter and enclosure. Through prolonged, repetitive actions such as twisting wire thousands of times, duration itself becomes a material, embedding time, memory, and physical limits into the work.

Born and raised in Korea, Kim immigrated alone to the United States in her early twenties. Navigating the cultural tension between restraint and self-assertion has become a foundational aspect of her practice. Her work reflects this state of in-betweenness, examining how cultural expectations, silence, and visibility are absorbed into material processes and spatial forms.

Her work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions at Rosewood Arts Center (Kettering, OH), and in group exhibitions at Morgan Lehman Gallery, Carter Burden Gallery, CP Project Space, and SVA Flatiron Gallery, among others. She is a Department Nominee for the Dedalus Foundation MFA Fellowship and has been featured in Hands Magazine and 20/20 at the School of Visual Arts. Kim will participate in the Kunstraum LLC Residency in New York in 2026.