JIHEE KIM

Kim Jihee is a South Korean Contemporary painter best known for her Sealed Smile series, which explores desire and inner tension beneath polished appearances. 

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She explores the dualities of beauty and pressure, desire and solitude. Her signature Sealed Smile series features wide-eyed girls with oversized, ornate sunglasses and awkward braces, figures that conceal vulnerability behind glamorous façades. These portraits reflect modern life’s contradictions: the curated exterior versus the emotional interior, the brilliant versus the brittle. This tension between brightness and melancholy, ornament and emptiness, forms the core of her visual language.

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Kim has exhibited widely, with over 300 shows in New York, London, Beijing, and Seoul. Her Trunk series, inspired by themes of travel and longing, turns luggage into narrative sculpture, bridging fine art and collectible design. Her works are housed in public and corporate collections such as Suwon I-Park Museum, Missha, and Ferrari Korea, and she has collaborated with brands including Royal Salute, Crocs, and Stonehenge. In 2022, Sealed Smile was featured on the cover of Korea’s national high school art textbook.