I am a self-taught multidisciplinary artist whose work is rooted in my experience as a second-generation Korean American, and as a caregiver for my parents and children. I am interested in the quiet ways memory lives in ordinary things like a piece of fruit, a patterned cloth, a family photograph, or a broom leaning on a courtyard wall. My background in architecture, urban planning, and public interest technology shapes how I think about place and community. I often find myself working against Silicon Valley’s fixation on the future by paying attention to what it overlooks: immigrant family life, domestic labor, aging, and the interior lives of suburban communities. Through solitary studio work and community-based projects, I transform my personal memory into shared cultural material.
Julie Kim is a Korean-American painter and installation artist based in San José, California. Her work draws on memories of a childhood divided between Seoul and the suburbs of Northern California during the late twentieth century.Her representational paintings include portraits of family members, still lifes, and suburban landscapes. Through this work, she depicts the absurd and humorous details in everyday immigrant life. A luminous color palette and flattened perspectives are used to convey the dream-like qualities of the otherwise ordinary.
