Modern Minhwa

This series applies the everyday visual language of Korean Minhwa to contemporary lifestyle scenes, reimagining ordinary moments as a modern pictorial landscape. Traditionally, Minhwa did not focus on realistic depictions of specific people or events, but instead expressed everyday wishes such as peace, well-being, and harmony through symbolism, flattened compositions, and rhythmic repetition. This project reinterprets those traditional aspirations in a contemporary context, focusing on personal rituals through which individuals living in fast-paced environments care for themselves and restore balance. The figures and spaces avoid direct references to objects or consumption, and instead rely on the ambiguity, negative space, and symbolic structure inherent to Minhwa to convey states of calm, immersion, and self-care. Through this approach, the work suggests that today’s private routines can be understood as a continuation of the desires once embedded in traditional Minhwa, connecting past and present through shared human sensibilities.