Life, Values & Legacy: Our Chat with Se Young Yim of New York

We recently had the chance to connect with Se Young Yim and have shared our conversation below.

Good morning Se Young, it’s such a great way to kick off the day – I think our readers will love hearing your stories, experiences and about how you think about life and work. Let’s jump right in? What is a normal day like for you right now?
These days, I work four days a week at a commercial art studio and dedicate the remaining time to my personal practice. Balancing both can be challenging, but I work with several other artists, which allows us to exchange knowledge and offer each other encouragement. It has become a meaningful community for me. I’m grateful to be part of this inspiring environment.
After work, I return home and spend time reflecting on my own projects. I work across both sculpture and painting. Recently, I’ve been focusing more on painting. I’m still researching the nature of dreams, and earlier this May, I had the opportunity to present one of my paintings titled Eggs, which combines dream imagery with my reflections, at The Blanc Gallery as part of Li Tang Community’s 5th Anniversary Exhibition.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
Hi, I’m an artist based in New York. I was born and raised in South Korea, where I studied Japanese and fashion before moving to New York to pursue Fine Art. I now work across painting and sculpture.
My artistic practice centers on exploring the vulnerable physicality of the human body, while also delving into themes of resemblance, reproduction, and heredity through the use of natural elements such as stones and mechanical movement. Through my work, I seek to capture the fragile nature of human existence.
One of my distinctive projects involves kinetic stone sculptures. These works metaphorically explore human life, its movements, cycles, and repetitions, through the form of animated stones. In one of my most unique installations, I created 14 to 20 stone-like objects, each embedded with its motor. These objects move, pause, collide, and rotate in repeating sequences, echoing the laborious rhythms of daily life. (the monotony of repetition, and the occasional friction that arises and passes.)
This project was first presented in 2023 at Trestle Art Space. A smaller grouping of the work was later exhibited at the Yeh Art Gallery at St. John’s University in this year. My ongoing interest lies in exploring how human experiences can be narrated through the interplay between natural materials and artificial, mechanical structures.

Thanks for sharing that. Would love to go back in time and hear about how your past might have impacted who you are today. What did you believe about yourself as a child that you no longer believe?
When I was younger, I didn’t believe I could become an artist. I didn’t major in art, nor had I received formal training, so although I always had a deep longing for art, it felt like an unattainable dream.
In my mid-twenties, I came to New York for an internship, and it was here that I reconnected with that dream. Visiting various galleries and art museums, I felt something stir deep inside me, something I had almost forgotten. It was late, but I realized I truly wanted to study art in New York. That led me to pursue an MFA at the School of Visual Arts, and that journey has shaped who I am today.
Since graduating, I’ve been working as an artist in New York. It hasn’t always been beautiful or easy; there have been many challenges, and there’s still so much to learn. But coming to the U.S. after living most of my life in Korea, and choosing to change my language, field, and culture to follow art, remains the best decision I’ve ever made. I now believe in the work I do.

What fear has held you back the most in your life?
The fear that has held me back the most in life is love. When I left my hometown, the most challenging part was the distance from the people and places I loved. It led me to question the nature of love itself.
I’ve often felt that humans are almost programmed to love others. Most of us are not born alone, and we live within communities. As we grow older, those communities may shift, geographically, linguistically, or emotionally, but the underlying need to be with someone remains. I’ve always found that both fascinating and puzzling.
Take language, for example. If there were only one speaker in the world, language wouldn’t exist. Its very nature requires the presence of others. This awareness of the “other”—that humans are always, consciously or not, oriented toward another person—feels deeply human to me.
To love another person as a human being is such a beautiful and joyful thing, yet it also fills me with fear. In Korea, there’s a stone famously believed to grant wishes. People travel from all over the region to touch this stone and make a wish. Over time, its hard surface has become round and smooth from the countless hands that have touched it.
To me, this is wondrous, terrifying, and full of love. The act of traveling far just to touch a stone speaks of a desperate wish, born out of deep love for someone or something. It’s a fear-laced hope that longs for something to go well. That kind of emotion, so soft, yet vast, powerful, and overwhelming, is why I believe love is the most difficult and beautiful thing to understand.
Love has, at times, made me hesitate to take risks. But it has also given me endless inspiration and curiosity in my artistic practice.

I think our readers would appreciate hearing more about your values and what you think matters in life and career, etc. So our next question is along those lines. What do you believe is true but cannot prove?
Faith itself. I truly believe that when you plant something in your heart and continue to hold it dear, your life gradually moves in that direction. I’ve experienced this again and again, and I trust that I’m still moving step by step toward the life I hope for.

Thank you so much for all of your openness so far. Maybe we can close with a future oriented question. If you knew you had 10 years left, what would you stop doing immediately?
Then I would take an extended vacation and travel with my mother right away. I have a very special bond with her. As her daughter, I feel a deep sense of resemblance—one that has become even more apparent since living far away from her. That connection often influences my work as well.
I define heredity as something inherited from another, not just biologically, but through place and people. My mother plays a significant role in that idea. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the fact that, as a woman, I have a body capable of having a baby. Whether or not I choose to, the sheer possibility of it feels strangely profound. I often dream of eggs, and to me, they hold symbolic meaning in the context of fertility and reproduction.
These days, I find myself thinking about egg-like stones, or stone-like eggs—smooth, round, and worn from being touched—objects that contain an unknown potential within. I believe all of these thoughts are rooted in the fact that I am my mother’s daughter.
So, if I only had ten years left, I would take her with me to travel the world. She loves traveling abroad and has always dreamed of doing it with me. This time, I want to return what she has given me.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: sey__yim