Velvet
Doi Kim

Doi Kim’s solo exhibition, Velvet presents works that contemplate our complex relationship with personal and collective traumas through metaphorical storytelling. This exhibition is inspired by the velvet covering a deer’s antlers: a thin layer of skin concentrated with blood vessels and nerves that carry nutrients necessary for the antler’s growth and protection. A deer’s antlers are used primarily for defensive measures, but they are also a symbol of strength and dominance, a sign of the deer’s hierarchical standing in their social group. If a deer is malnourished, injured, or stressed, blood drains out of the antlers, and the velvet layer dries and peels away, revealing the mature antler underneath.

The exhibition invites viewers to imagine moments when their own “velvet” is “shed” in traumatic experiences. For instance, her painting Antler (2022) depicts the bleeding antler, shedding velvet and revealing the hardened core. It provides an entry point that leaves a clue to reflect upon how various levels of traumatic experience impact us. Kim’s virtual landscapes, depicted in animation, printmaking, and painting, invite viewers to look at personal and collective trauma differently. Her work seeks to connect various levels of “macroscopic” histories with present-day lives, to embody new perspectives on generational pain, and to consider how new insights on trauma might transform our present and future.

Velvet encourages viewers to re-envision the power dynamics of their personal lives and the broader geopolitical landscape, establishing a relationship between past and present from an individual’s perspective.

About the Artist 

Doi Kim (b. 1995 Seoul, South Korea) is an artist living and working in New York City, USA. She holds a BFA in Fine Arts from the Korea National University of Arts in Seoul, South Korea. She moved to New York to attend the School of Visual Arts, receiving an MFA in fine art in 2021. Her works are grounded in printmaking practice but often borrowed from installation practices, animation, and performance. Her artistic practice presents questions to reinstate the experiential quality of inscribed history to emancipate ourselves from the dominant narrative, which often reproduces inequality in the current world. Her work has been included in exhibitions at O’Flaherty’s; Project Gallery V; Manhattan graphics center; BWAC; 2022 Screenprint Biennial at Opalka Gallery, Albany, NY and Mirabo Press Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Ethan Cohen KUBE, Beacon, NY; Webber Gallery, Ocala, FL; Susquehanna Art Museum, Harrisburg, PA; Untitled Art Miami Beach, Miami, FL; Starta Arta, New York, NY; Stone leaf Retreat, Eddyville, NY; SVA Gallery; Rear Window Gallery, Hangzhou, China; Gallery AVU, Prague, Czech Republic; Šaloun Villa, Prague, Czech Republic; space xx, Seoul, South Korea. She received the Outstanding Achievement Award from the 2022 Tripvill International Film Festival.

For more information on Doi Kim, visit her website and follow her on Instagram.