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.

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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.

Feeling What We Have Stopped Feeling

Review by Chih-Yang Chen, Art Director

What interests me most about Minjeong Kim's practice is her attention to sensations that usually escape our awareness. Rather than focusing on the body itself, she concentrates on the small spaces around it, the areas between skin and clothing, object and touch, presence and absence. In Negative Boundary, something normally invisible becomes tangible. The narrow gap between the body and clothing is transformed into a physical condition through the use of metal. What is usually soft, familiar and unnoticed is suddenly interrupted by weight and coldness. This shift creates a subtle discomfort, but I do not see the work as being about discomfort alone. Instead, it reveals how easily the body adapts and how much sensory information we unconsciously filter out every day. I find it particularly interesting that Minjeong approaches jewellery less as adornment and more as a way of activating perception. This allows her work to move beyond conventional expectations of scale and wearability. The pieces feel closer to extensions of the body than decorative accessories. Their meaning only fully emerges through physical encounter. There is also a strong sense of restraint in the work. Minjeong is not interested in dramatic gestures or exaggerated forms. Instead, she focuses on small shifts in sensation and attention. These quiet interventions ask viewers to become aware of things they already know physically but rarely think about consciously. Her idea of absence is especially compelling. In works such as Empty Presence and Negative Boundary, absence is not treated as emptiness. Rather, it becomes an active condition that allows sensation to exist in the first place. This perspective feels particularly relevant in a world saturated with constant stimulation. Sometimes what is missing is just as important as what is present. What I appreciate most is that Minjeong trusts the intelligence of the body. The work does not rely heavily on narrative or symbolism. Instead, it works through physical memory. We all carry expectations about how clothing should feel, how objects should sit against the skin, and how our bodies occupy space. By slightly disrupting these expectations, she creates moments where the familiar becomes newly noticeable. After spending time with the project, I found myself thinking about how much of our physical experience happens automatically. Clothing rests against the skin, pressure builds and disappears, textures become invisible through repetition. We stop noticing these things not because they disappear, but because the body learns to live with them. Minjeong's work gently interrupts that process. It reminds us that sensation is never fixed, and that even the spaces we no longer feel are still shaping our experience of the world.

Artist Highlight - Minjeong Kim

Interview and Review

ARTIST INTERVIEW

Feeling What We Have Stopped FeelingReview by Chih-Yang Chen, Art Director

Feeling What We Have Stopped Feeling

Review by Chih-Yang Chen, Art Director