Seongmin Yoo’s paints portals to future worlds

Employing imagination to build empathy in an entirely new universe

Guest Seongming YooWriter Savannah Anno Editor Edgar Zhang

Get Ready to Disembark
2024, oil, ink, rice paper on panel, 24 x 24 in.
Copyright © Seongmin Yoo

Seongmin Yoo launches her audience across planets, beyond time, and through portals into new dimensions with her multifaceted and disciplinary-spanning practice. A painter, sculptor, and performance artist, Yoo has touched every corner of the art world — while the Morris Graves Museum of Art currently showcases two of her solo exhibitions, Pulses of Experience and Artemis: Visions of the Universe in Humboldt, California, visitors of The Kollection in Brooklyn can also view her installation Overseer on the other side of the country.

Yoo not only varies her installations by geographic location, but by the intensity of their content and the manner in which they are crafted. If you were to walk through Pulses of Experience and Artemis: Visions of the Universe without reading any of the wall text, it may be easy to assume that you were viewing the work of two very different artists. On the surface, the pair are polar opposites: where Pulses of Experience features life-sized standing figures, Artemis is made up of paintings that depict colorful alien landscapes. Where Artemis is ultramodern, Pulses of Experience is haunting. The assumption that the two are wholly different, however, would be a false one. 

Pulses of Experience (Gallery View) At Morris Graves Museum of Art

“I’m still saying the same things,” Yoo explained. “I’m talking about displacement and tension between grouping. My sculpture installation is really a direct message. It’s kind of a heavy subject, so some people like it and some people couldn’t, because it’s very emotional. I wanted to say something softer with that voice, so I’m using painting that’s kind of weird and colorful — some people like that vivid or bright emotion.”

Yoo’s standing figures — faceless; plastered; and adorned with natural materials like honeycomb, fur, feathers, and shells — are embodiments of tension and uncertainty.

Pulses of Experience (Gallery View) At Morris Graves Museum of Art

The heaviness Yoo speaks of is held in the almost-monstrous qualities within the figures, as well as the shock in the air when visitors enter the exhibition space and are met with these otherworldly pieces hanging from the ceiling, pinned to the gallery walls, and emerging from the ground. Referenced in the exhibition’s title, Pulses of Experience investigates the instant thoughts and feelings that surface when people from two different places come face to face. The perception of these figures as less than human speaks to the way bias pushes us to look for “the other” when we encounter something new; the physical manifestation of this otherness through Yoo’s detailing also represents the dehumanization felt by those that are othered, both socially and systematically.

In their looming size, weighted stances and expressive hand gestures, Yoo’s standing figures come to life in a visceral way. Inspired by everyday people she encounters in the real world, visitors cannot help but project their own humanity onto them — this, in fact, is something Yoo encourages. Representing a broad feeling of displacement and the varied experience of being “foreign,” Yoo’s standing figures have the ability to evolve through their interpretation into a million different things.

Across the Open Earth
2024, oil, ink, rice paper on panel, 24 x24 in.
Copyright © Seongmin Yoo

An immigrant herself, originally from Korea, Yoo translates her own experience into these works, hoping that others will be able to imprint upon them with their own stories. At the Morris Graves Museum of Art, a woman diagnosed with cancer was able to see her story in one of Yoo’s figures covered in oak galls, reminding her of tumors. In my own examination of Yoo’s work, I imagined my grandmother arriving in the United States for the very first time, her appearance different from those around her.

Was she made to feel faceless, or monstrous too?

“When they decide they want to be artists, most artists begin questioning if their voice is relevant or not; that’s a really big step, when they accept it,” Yoo said. “You have to understand that you are not the only one to deal with that [life experience], everyone has been through a similar or even exact same kind of thing.”

After receiving her second MFA in Studio Art from UC Davis, Yoo has remained closely tied to the area, maintaining her studio space here and developing public art projects across the community. On walks from downtown, students are met with one of Yoo’s signature alien paintings, but in mural form. The figures tower over them in dream-like vibrancy, bringing their imagined planet into the Davis landscape — a connection that’s more than significant to Yoo.

Birth Place
2024, oil, ink, ricepaper on panel, 24 x 24 in.
Copyright © Seongmin Yoo

“I proudly say I want to be an art voice in this region,” Yoo shared. “My work is relevant here because I’m getting my material from this region.”

The artist is in fact collecting her material here, both literally and figuratively. While Davis is home to expansive green space, ideal for sourcing the natural elements Yoo utilizes in her sculptures, it is also a hub for cultural diversity and resilience. As of 2024, almost 20% of Davis residents were born outside of the United States; at UC Davis, an estimated 17% of the student body are international. The tension that Yoo’s work describes, and the displacement she has wrestled with across her life, are feelings shared by a vast network within the community surrounding her. Yoo explores what it means to be someone that must move, or migrate, to a new world and grapple with the challenge of adaptation. But this adaptation is a conversation. It is not the responsibility of the journeyer to assimilate; rather, their arrival marks an opportunity for a community’s perspective and capacity for empathy to grow a bit wider. 

Storm Clears Your Path
2024, oil, ink, ricepaper on panel, 24 x 24 in.
Copyright © Seongmin Yoo

Within Artemis: Visions of the Universe, Yoo imagines each painting to represent a different, soon-to-be discovered planet. Believing that humans are much closer to advancing space travel than we believe we are, Yoo plays with imagination and reality in her depictions of alien lifeforms. Who are we to say that these beings aren’t actually real? Giving us a glimpse into these new worlds, Yoo pushes viewers to imagine themselves as both astronauts and understanding observers. The goal is not to humanize these aliens necessarily, or to project our own traits onto them, but to recognize their invaluable qualities as beings despite their obvious dissimilarity to ourselves. 

“I don’t like that people think ‘okay, they [the aliens] could eat and sleep like us,’” Yoo said. “How do we know that they’re eating, sleeping like us? They have a totally different environment.” 

Whipping up Wonders
2024, oil, ink, ricepaper on panel, 12 x 18 in.
Copyright © Seongmin Yoo

Stirring the Stars
2024, oil, ink, ricepaper on panel, 24 x 24 in.
Copyright © Seongmin Yoo

Across Yoo’s body of work, each alien is unique: some appear to be melting, others appear on the canvas like colorful, sewn together puff balls. Adorned with tentacles, webbed feet, missing teeth, and cyclops-like eyes, the magic of Yoo’s work lies in building a sense of aliveness where there should not be. While it may seem likely for viewers to sit with these works in the same playful way they’re presented, the stillness of the landscapes surrounding them and the expressive life found in their gestures spurs a unique sense of empathy and affection for these aliens. In her visions, Yoo poses an important question.

If we are able to celebrate the uniqueness of these small beings, to marvel at their bodies and lives and languages which are wholly different from our own, why can we not apply this openness to other people?

In constant conversation with one another, Pulses of Experience tells the story of post-displacement, serving as a window into a universally visceral experience, while Artemis: Visions of the Universe is perhaps Yoo’s attempt at finding a solution to that tension. How do we perceive those different from us, and how can we adjust these perceptions with compassion and grace? Through her work, Seongmin Yoo builds vessels to tell stories of our past and hopeful premonitions of our future, a world in which any being can come to understand another.