Jumi Kim

“I have never felt at home anywhere. 

I fly across the sea, searching for a place to belong. 

I am like a wanderer. So I build my own dreamland, shaped by memories and journeys I have never fully lived.” 

To My Youth, a series of collages and paintings, represents the artist’s experience of living across South Korea, the United States, and Australia. She constructs spaces from memory by cutting, layering, and attaching fragments of found images and personal photographs. Each fragment becomes part of an ongoing journey, a reconstruction of moments and emotions that have shaped her sense of self. 

Within the works, traces of her first cultural identity emerge through subtle references to minhwa, ink painting, hanok architecture, and Korean masks. In painting, she adds gestures, movements, and colours that carry an emotional rhythm. This body of work is not merely a replication of collage but a reflection on growth, a farewell to youth and a quiet gift to herself as she steps into new beginnings.