Paintings on silk by artist Reeha Lim. Raised between Korea and China, and currently based in the United States, Lim’s work reflects on themes of diasporic memory, spatial belonging, and the fragmentation of the self across borders. Reconciling her own experiences forming a sense of self in transit, Lim’s layered depictions exist between clarity and opacity, familiarity and estrangement:
“The body appears in my work as fragmented and in flux—gestures caught mid-transition, toes curled, hands hovering. These are bodies that do not settle into place. They resist the spatial clarity of architectural systems and instead suggest states of becoming, disorientation, or quiet refusal. My interest lies in how desire moves through space when the body is out of sync with its environment—when it stumbles, adapts incompletely, or longs without arrival.”
Lim works with a material that holds contradiction (fragile yet resilient, translucent yet dense). Influenced by the Korean painting technique BaeChae, Lim works from both sides of the silk, allowing pigments to seep through and become embedded within its structure. Translucent forms, partial figures, and shifting grounds are layered to create a visual language that mirrors the complexities of the diasporic condition.