I am interested in how everyday objects hold a sense of time that feels both fleeting and enduring. Working with materials such as paper, porcelain, and plastic, I explore how meaning emerges in ordinary things, often revealing layered and sometimes conflicting ideas about history, culture, and value.

I collect disposable objects that we handle, accumulate, and discard, such as plastic bags, take-out containers, and cardboard boxes. These items are designed for short, practical use, yet they often outlast the moment they were needed. I’m drawn to this tension between brief encounters and lasting presence, between use and afterlife.

In my studio, these objects become starting points. I trace them, press them, cast them, and print from them. Through contact, these processes leave marks and impressions that suggest both the object itself and something less tangible. It is an act of translation, rather than replication. The resulting works often feel familiar, but also slightly out of reach.

Working this way also helps me process these objects before letting them go. I press, crush, and reuse them until they feel worn down or emptied out. They become tattered, compressed, or strained. There is a tension between preserving and letting go, between care and exhaustion.

This body of work brings these ideas together as a kind of quiet landscape or tablescape. Objects appear pressed or suspended in time. They suggest moments in time, like brief encounters we rarely return to, and feel both specific and transient. I try to record these moments as they pass, making visible what often goes unnoticed. The works become traces of contact, holding onto something that is constantly slipping away.

Bio

Yoonmi Nam is an artist born in Seoul, Korea, and has studied in Korea, Canada, US, and Japan. Yoonmi is interested in the observation and depiction of everyday objects and occurrences, especially when they subtly suggest contradictions - a perception of time that feels both temporary and lasting and a sense of place that feels both familiar and foreign. Growing up as an only child with working parents, she often engaged in quiet observation of things around her. Experiences of living in disparate cultures, with different people and their histories, allowed her to notice what is often unnoticed in one’s own familiar spaces. She works in traditional printmaking processes such as mokuhanga (Japanese-style water-based woodblock printing) and lithography to make imagery as well as explore other materials such as clay, glass, and paper.

Yoonmi received her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and her BFA from Hongik University in Seoul, Korea. She was awarded residencies at Mokuhanga Innovation Laboratory in Japan three times (2004, 2012, 2019) to study traditional Japanese woodblock printing techniques and is the recipient of the Keiko Kadota Award for Advancement of Mokuhanga. She has participated in artist residencies at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado, Hong Kong Open Printshop, Brandywine Workshop and Archives in Philadelphia, Frans Masereel Centrum in Belgium, Kala Art Institute in California, Vermont Studio Center, and a 5-year studio residency at Studios Inc in Kansas City. Her work is in the collections of the RISD Museum, RI; Spencer Museum of Art, KS; and the Hawai’i State Art Museum, HI, among others. She has shown her work in over 30 solo exhibitions and 200 group exhibitions, both nationally and internationally. Yoonmi serves as the chair of the International Mokuhanga Association and is a professor of printmaking at the University of Kansas.