Tina Kim Gallery is pleased to return to Art Basel Miami Beach from December 6–8, 2024. Our presentation will feature major new works by leading modern and contemporary artists from across our international program who engage with themes of tradition, migration, and globalization.
Egyptian-born artist Ghada Amer is known for her longstanding advocacy of women’s agency and liberation in her artistic practice. Her monumental “Paravent Girls” bronzes, commissioned for her 2023 retrospective at the Mucem in Marseilles, were recently on view at the Domaine National du Palais-Royal in Paris as part of Art Basel in October.
Born in Korea and based in Colorado, Maia Ruth Lee's ongoing “Bondage Baggage” series explores themes of diaspora, displacement, and migration. In this series, Lee's canvases are first tied with rope, imitating the methods used by Nepalese migrants to transport their belongings. After being stained with colored ink, these canvases are unfurled into flat paintings, bearing a lasting imprint of the binding process.
The theme of migration also shapes the practice of Dutch artist Jennifer Tee and her "Tampan Tulip” collages. Assembled from tulip petals, the series references Indonesian tampan cloths, ceremonial textiles used during rites of passage like birth, death, or marriage. Bearing the traditional motif of a ship, the series is also tied to Tee’s own Chinese-Indonesian heritage, symbolizing her family members’ journey from Indonesia to the Netherlands.
The late Filipina-American artist Pacita Abad created vibrant textile works inspired by the diverse cultures she encountered during her travels. Her trapunto-style paintings, known for their unique method of stitching and padding, maximize color and texture through adornments like sequins, beads, and buttons.
Our booth will feature sculptures by Mire Lee, whose Hyundai Commission installation recently opened at Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in London to critical acclaim. Lee’s practice draws on primal bodily experiences to create works that both attract and repulse the viewer, using industrial materials to evoke the forms and sensations of living organisms.
Multimedia artist Suki Seokyeong Kang reinterprets traditional Korean crafts to create modular sculptures and installations that challenge our perceptions of the individual body within society. Gimhongsok's balloon sculptures playfully question how we evaluate people, addressing the marginalization of social minorities while drawing a humorous parallel between objects and individuals.
Italian-born artist Davide Balliano merges painting with the physicality of sculpture, skillfully layering gesso and plaster to create intricate grayscale patterns of arches and circles that recall classical architecture. The imperfections on the surface of the paintings—made through Balliano’s process of layering and scraping—serve as traces of past gestures, revealing an ongoing process of transformation and renewal.
Dansaekhwa painter Ha Chong-Hyun is currently the subject of a solo exhibition at our New York gallery that celebrates 50 years of his widely acclaimed Conjunction series. In Ha's practice, oil paint is pushed from the back to the front of the artwork, merging the weave and texture of the hemp fabric with the paint itself.
Korean painter Kibong Rhee depicts atmospheric, misty landscapes by layering sheer fabric over his canvases. Rhee’s dreamlike works reflect on the transience of perception. This theme is echoed in the works of Mexican artist Tania Pérez Córdova, whose sculptures explore personal memory, the passage of time, and how we interact with objects. On display will be works from Pérez Córdova’s “Contour” series, created by pouring molten bronze into outlines of doors and windows drawn in sand and inspired by the artist’s memories.
Our presentation also includes works by Dansaekhwa master Park Seo-Bo, renowned for his “Ecriture” series. These monochromatic relief paintings are created by engraving repeated lines into the canvas, often integrating Korean hanji paper. This process allows Park to achieve a meditative rhythm through the act of layering and redrawing, an approach rooted in Buddhist and Taoist philosophy. A contemporary and fellow member of the Dansaekhwa movement, Kwon Young-Woo further explores the possibilities of traditional Korean paper as a medium, layering, ripping, and painting it to create experimental works that highlight the material’s form.
In his contemplative paintings, the late Korean artist Kang Seok Ho focuses on cropped details of people’s clothing and transforms anonymous portraits into intimate studies of texture and color. Using a layered painting technique, he captures the subtle variations in light and shadow, creating compositions that are sometimes likened to landscapes due to their depth and detail.
We are also delighted to present an installation for the Meridians sector featuring a group of large-scale tapestries from the 1980s by Korean fiber artist Lee ShinJa. With a career spanning over six decades, Lee is recognized in Korea as a pioneering artist who has redefined the boundaries of her medium. In 2023, these tapestries were highlighted in her highly anticipated retrospective at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) in Gwacheon, Korea. Combining a painter's sense of freedom with virtuosic technical precision, Lee interweaves colored threads to capture the ephemeral nature of light, translating its fleeting quality into cascading, abstract forms.
