Sophia Kim Reeves

Artist Statement

My work develops through material-based abstraction in which perception, instability, and spatial tension emerge through process rather than composition. Rooted in Jeju Island and shaped by migration to California, my practice is informed by displacement as a structural condition of identity formation rather than stability.

A return to South Korea while caring for my father intensified my focus on process as temporal accumulation, where memory, material response, and lived experience form continuous states of becoming. Movement between geographies frames instability as a condition through which systems of belonging and perception are constructed and reconfigured.

Influenced by the fragmented geometric structure of Jogakbo and its construction within constrained domestic conditions, I consider fragmentation not as rupture alone, but as a system of assembly and provisional cohesion. Working with Hanji (traditional Korean mulberry paper), I construct layered surfaces in which material and structure operate as an active field rather than support and image.

The surface is formed through accumulation, interruption, concealment, and removal, producing conditions that resist resolution. Light emerges through material behavior rather than depiction. Translucency, absorption, and depth generate shifting perceptual states. Grids and repeated marks function as provisional structures held under tension, while abrasion, creasing, and rupture register force as continuous material negotiation.

At close range, the work resolves into fractures, fibers, and disruption; at distance, these conditions cohere into temporary fields of visual order. This oscillation positions perception as unstable and continuously constructed.

Within diaspora, the work operates through material systems of displacement rather than narrative identity. Coherence remains provisional, structure contingent, and meaning emerges through temporal layering rather than fixed form.