About Liz Kim

Liz Kim is an emerging Korean-Canadian artist, currently studying in Alberta University of the Arts. She explores creative ways to visualize her experience of immigration, through exploring the themes of memories, dreams, connection and disconnection, and fragmentation over time.

Artist Statement

“Through my works, I create a place of in-betweenness, a chaotic place of refuge like a dream. Where different memories and realities collide and create something new.

I consider the color blue with many different associations. To me, blue often means loneliness, but also happiness and freedom. I associate it as such, as I refer to the color within nature; especially the blue sky or the blue ocean. It’s easy to feel lonely, but that also comes with the freedom of having to not be rooted to the ground. The blue sky represents the world I knew living in Korea, and the ocean is the world I came to when I immigrated to Canada.  Although in reality we know the sky is bigger than the sea, there’s still much more unknown within the sea than the sky. The unfamiliarity of the ocean is the sense I got when I immigrated to Canada and was forced to adapt. The suffocation. Inability to verbally speak up when I chose not to submit to the change. I needed to teach myself how to breathe underwater, to swim rather than fly, and be cautious not to drown rather than fly away too far.

Although the duality of my identity is always reminded in my waking moments, in my dream, I’m able to visit a place where the sky touches the sea and merges together into blue. The disconnections of my two cultures are merged together and connected to one in my dream. Neither the sky or the sea. Where kites swim and stingrays fly. Where gravity malfunctions and one can only float.”