South Korean sculptor Kim Yun Shin wields a chainsaw with quiet precision, refining a craft she has honed over decades spent far from her homeland. Now 91, she is finally receiving major recognition in South Korea through a major retrospective at the Hoam Museum of Art.
Titled “Two Be One”, the exhibition is the museum’s first since its founding in 1982 to focus on a woman artist. It features around 170 works, including her signature abstract wooden sculptures carved with a chainsaw, alongside paintings that reflect her deep engagement with nature, existence and form.
“The saw is my body”, Kim said in her studio in Paju, northwest of Seoul. “When I lift it and cut the wood, it has to move exactly like me”.
Born in 1935 in Wonsan, now in North Korea, Kim spent her childhood in the countryside, speaking to trees and rice fields. She experienced the turbulence of Japanese colonial rule and later the Korean War, during which her family fled south. The disappearance of her brother, who joined the independence movement and the cutting down of trees she considered her companions left a lasting emotional mark.
“Those trees were my friends”, she said, explaining that her work became a way to preserve and transform what was lost. “I wanted them to endure”.
After studying in France and returning to Seoul as an art professor, Kim worked during South Korea’s military dictatorship, a period when artists were closely scrutinised and women were largely invisible in the art world.
At 48, she moved to Argentina, drawn by its forests and artistic freedom; and lived there for 40 years. There she began chainsaw carving in earnest, working with dense woods like palo santo and algarrobo; and later experimenting with stone such as onyx and sodalite in Mexico and Brazil. According to curator Tae Hyun-sun, she built “her own artistic world, nourished by culture and nature”.
Her recognition has grown only in recent years. Represented internationally by Lehmann Maupin, Kim’s work has appeared in major exhibitions in London, New York, Seoul and the Venice Biennale.
Her influence also extends to younger artists, including Korean-Argentine filmmaker Cecilia Kang, who says Kim showed her that “living a life doing what one loves is possible”.
Kim herself changed her name at 15 to Yun Shin, meaning “truth and faith”, following a monk’s advice to seek her “true colour”. She says those words still guide her today: “Sometimes I feel they are what have carried me through this life”.
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