Meet John Sungju Kim

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful John Sungju Kim a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

John Sungju, so great to be with you and I think a lot of folks are going to benefit from hearing your story and lessons and wisdom. Imposter Syndrome is something that we know how words to describe, but it’s something that has held people back forever and so we’re really interested to hear about your story and how you overcame imposter syndrome.

Like most unpleasant things in life, imposter syndrome hits like a school bus on a Sunday. As an artsy kid surrounded by nerds in high school; I felt that my art was above average, and boldly applied to a fashion program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. To my delight I got accepted and moved from sunny San Diego to the Windy city. Immediately I was blown away, not only by how I didn’t fit in with the dyed hair, piercings, and smoking; my art was shallow, uninteresting, worst of all unoriginal. I had no style, no desire to speak on political or emotional issues, and no infrastructure to build my artistic vision. Part of me felt that I only went into art because my academics fell short compared to my peers, and when my art fell apart I was devastated. In all honesty I haven’t overcome imposter syndrome. I’ve learned to live with it- and that’s enough. The idea is to heal and let the scars and experience become one with the self. To anyone struggling with imposter syndrome, take pride. Be proud of your work, yourself, your failures, all the good and bad culminate into what makes people unique. Yohji Yamamoto says this more eloquently in his quote “Start copying what you love. Copy copy copy copy. At the end of the copy you will find yourself.” (Yohji Yamamoto)

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

As a twenty year old art student with the love and support from my family, I have the freedom to shape my life and career in any direction I please. Sometimes that freedom is too much, it’s paralyzing, breeds procrastination, and favors comfort over growth. I used art to fill the gaps in my freedom, to create and obtain things that were once inaccessible. As my options grew, my desire dwindled. The approach I took to art making was unsustainable. Art created from desire is easily resolved, and once it’s resolved the art disappears. Loss—of objects, memories, or people—is often overlooked by society for its lack of glamour, which is why we romanticize longevity and preservation. But in an age of instant, infinite archiving, care and attention have been stripped from what it means to preserve. In my work, I aim to restore a sense of care and intentional labor—acts that resist disposability and extend the life of everyday objects. For the past three years, I’ve practiced embroidery on second hand jackets, and more recently, I’ve been experimenting with sandblasting and glazing ceramic plates. These jackets and plates are found objects, once destined for the landfill. By imprinting them with hours of focused, manual effort, I attempt to transform them—embedding labor into their surfaces until they become something more than what they were: not just objects, but works of art that carry time, touch, and attention. For a long time, I made things without really knowing why. I didn’t have the experience or the vocabulary to explain my work. Now, I’m finally starting to understand the ideas behind what I create and can speak about it more clearly. I feel that my journey has just begun and I’m glad to have persevered through the tough times.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Skills, ideas, and knowledge are never going to be good at a young age, they need to be developed and adapted to become something that is refined and legible. The most impactful things in any journey are going to be revelations. The revelation that your work is not good, or not important is going to be the first in many journeys. This often leads to imposter syndrome and a desire to quit or pivot, but the most important thing to do when encountering a revelation is to humble yourself and be open to growth. For any artist looking to improve; create in volume and document it. Even if you think it sucks or you hate it, having a database of your work that exists separate from your memory will act as a second set of eyes to fall back to in times that are sluggish. My last piece of advice for those who have a natural desire or tendency to create, cherish those moments. There is no need to try and hold on to them, but at least acknowledge them and draw from them. I remember when I could draw and create without shame; uninhibited by any worries of the world and being so brutally true to myself. I’ve noticed that in my neglect I had lost my sense of self in pursuit of what I thought the world wanted from me. Stay true to yourself, even if it feels like the wrong thing to do.

Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?

Taking inspiration from my own life, and generating original ideas that are genuine to my character has been a problem that arose as I started to take art more seriously. I make art to escape from what is mundane and depressing. The process of my art focuses on repetition and time as a form of meditation; this keep my mind off being so depressed all the time. Now that I’m in art school and pressured to speak about my life and what makes me unique, it has forced me to confront uncomfortable feelings that are inherently opposite to why I make my art. I don’t want my art to focus on my problems, but when I try and think of ideas that are unique to my experience I find that the ideas are mostly uninteresting, already explored, or depressing. Its much easier to look at other artist that have arrived to a satisfying conclusion; to pull inspiration from them and to make art about their work. For the past decade or so I did what was easy, but at this point in my art making career I think its just time to bite the bullet and explore all that is good and terrible about myself. I think it’s a bad idea, but I’m all out of good ideas. If feels dishonest to throw away nine years of my life in favor of being honest and true to myself. I’m really not sure what to do, but in the spirit of being true to myself and taking inspiration from my life I think I will just wait. In a fighting game that I play (yomi hustle), each player have access to all of their own, and their opponents moves, and the aim of the game is to guess the opponents move then use a move that beats it. Often times its overwhelming to search through forty moves in thirty seconds, and when a good option isn’t available the best thing to do is wait a turn. When there’s no threat I think its best to just wait it out.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: Johnnyboi0i

Image Credits

The images used in my art work come from the mangaka Hirohiko Araki from the manga JOJO’s Bizarre adventures