7 October 2026
Artist Highlight - Minjeong Kim
Interview and Review
Minjeong Kim is a London-based jewellery artist whose practice spans jewellery and body-related installations. She holds an MA in Jewellery and Metal from the Royal College of Art, and a BFA in Ceramic Art from Seoul National University of Science & Technology. Her work has been exhibited internationally, with multiple participations in Munich Jewellery Week, the 2025 Beijing International Jewellery Art Exhibition, the Romanian Jewelry Week, and the London Design Festival. Her practice investigates the imperceptible spaces between body and object, exploring sensation, absence, and the boundaries we have learned not to feel.
ARTIST INTERVIEW
1. Your work often begins from the space between body and object. What first made you interested in the areas of the body that are usually overlooked or no longer felt?
I work with different kinds of tactile sensations that the body has collected such as textures and pressures we go through so often that we stop recognising them. When people are suddenly made aware of these sensations, it creates an unfamiliar feeling, a tension between themselves and the object. Sometimes that tension becomes compulsive. What interests me is that gap, the moment where something completely familiar becomes strange again. I want to draw people back to what their body already knows but has stopped noticing.
2. In Negative Boundary, the invisible space between skin and clothing becomes something physical. What changes when that forgotten gap is made visible?
People stop feeling the texture of their clothing because they wear it every day and it becomes invisible to the body. By filling that gap with something heavy and cold, like metal, that comfort breaks. That disruption is when people start to notice the space that they had been adjusted to. For me, that discomfort is not a problem to solve, it's a sign that the body is still sensing. That moment of tension is when you know you're alive to something.
3. You describe jewellery not as adornment, but as a vessel of perception. How does this shift the way you think about scale, intimacy and the body?
Thinking of jewellery as more than adornment allowed me a lot of freedom in how I approach work that is installed on the body. For me it's more like an extension of the body itself, completed when the two come together. If the body is already a form shaped by perception, then what is worn on top of it is a continuation of that. That freed me from thinking about what jewellery is supposed to be
4. Your works seem to sit between touch and distance. Are they made to be imagined on the body, remembered by the body, or physically experienced through the body?
Most of my work starts from the body and returns to it. They are meant to be physically experienced, but not just felt in the moment. What interests me is how that experience disrupts what the body already expects. We carry memories of how things should feel, and when something breaks that expectation, the body has to think with it. That's the moment I'm working towards
5. Both Empty Presence and Negative Boundary suggest that absence is active rather than empty. What do you think absence can do to a body or a space?
Absence makes the body concentrate. I don't think of it as emptiness, but more like a resting state, something the body needs in order to feel anything at all. If we were conscious of every sensation at once, we would be exhausted. So absence is selective, it's how the body decides what matters. What I find interesting is that when absence is suddenly interrupted, what surfaces is not just sensation but memory. The body remembers what it had stopped noticing.
CLOSE TO THE SKIN
Review by Sara Chyan, Curator
Minjeong Kim pays attention to sensations the body has learnt to ignore. Clothing sits against the skin all day, pressure comes and goes, and after a while we stop noticing either. Her work brings some of those sensations back into focus.
In Negative Boundary, a rough metal form sits tightly around the wrist. It looks heavy before it is even worn. Against the skin, its uneven surface and weight turn the small gap normally left between body and clothing into something solid. Minjeong describes the coldness and pressure as part of the work, not as discomfort that needs to be corrected.
I find the surface particularly effective. It is coarse, almost crusted in places, and very different from jewellery that has been polished for comfort. The wrist is still recognisable as the place where jewellery belongs, but the object does not behave like ordinary adornment.
The long black garment approaches the body in another way. Its sleeves continue far beyond the hands and almost reach the floor. Nothing about the fabric is especially threatening, yet the exaggerated length turns something familiar into a restriction. The body seems partly protected and partly trapped by the same piece of clothing.
Minjeong speaks about absence as something active: the body filters sensations because noticing everything all the time would be exhausting. I understand that idea, although I think the work is more convincing when it stays close to touch. A heavy object around the wrist or a sleeve that has become too long communicates more directly than the language of absence or memory.
There is also a practical difficulty with showing work like this. From a distance, I can see the scale, texture and relationship to the body, but I cannot feel the weight or coldness that Minjeong considers central to the piece. Part of the work remains with the wearer.
That limitation does not bother me. It makes the difference between looking at a body and actually being inside one much clearer.