A selection of work from artist Yeon Yeoin‘s latest solo exhibition with DIA contemporary. Born and based in Seoul, Yeon majored in Psychology and Creative Visual Arts at Sogang University. Her work is an exploration of emotion through surreal imagery. Using a wide range of techniques, from pen and ink to digital painting, Yeon creates a unique world inspired by her personal experiences and filled with original characters that reflect difficult-to-define emotional states.
In “The House That My Mother Built,” Yeon uses rooms and domestic spaces as a motif to explore the formative environments of childhood. Here the “house” is not just a physical dwelling but an inner architecture—a psychic shelter layered with memory. When Yeon was young, her room was a refuge from the outside world, a site of imagination and identity formation where private tea parties and picture book characters became part of how she made sense of the world. The act of painting now is a similarly purposeful exercise, an effort to translate fragments of emotion and imagination into a visual language for herself and others to understand and take part in. Viewers are invited to consider what houses and spaces shaped them, what memories and emotions are harboured there, and whether they are ready to start building anew:
“The spaces I lived in, the words I heard, the picture books I saw, and the people I could not help but resemble—all of these built my house. Emotions deserve protection, and a room is everyone’s rightful claim. Where was the house that made you? What emotions filled its rooms? And now—are you ready to lay another brick?”
Yeon Yeoin’s “The House That My Mother Built” is on display at DIA contemporary until September 27th.
