Genie Kim
Mississauga, ON
Booth 244
Main
Genie Kim is a Korean-Canadian artist based in Toronto, working with ceramic sculpture and charcoal drawing. Her practice centers on healing and nature, and on a quiet reflection on memory and the way we come to understand life through lived experience. Kim’s charcoal works engage with memory as something layered, fragile, and incomplete. Rather than constructing clear narratives or representational scenes, she focuses on the emotional residue of memory, its absences and traces. The material nature of charcoal—powdery, impermanent, and easily erased—mirrors the instability of recollection itself. Through repetitive drawing and subtle mark-making, her process becomes a form of contemplation, where the insight that gradually emerges is a sense of gratitude. Her recent charcoal works move toward more minimal and abstract forms, shifting attention away from imagery and toward sensation, rhythm, and breath. In her ceramic practice, Kim takes a more physical and tactile approach. Hand-built forms emphasize surface, weight, and balance, evoking an intimate relationship between the body and the natural world. Sculptural references to seeds, animals, and protective forms suggest vulnerability alongside resilience, and the quiet persistence of life. Clay, as a material that holds touch and time, allows her to work through gestures of care, grounding, and presence. Across both mediums, healing is not presented as a resolved state, but as an ongoing attitude. Through repetition, reduction, and attentiveness, Kim navigates the space between solidity and disappearance, form and emptiness. Her work invites viewers to slow down and encounter a moment of stillness, where reflection and gratitude can gently surface.
