Various Small Fires is pleased to represent Kyungmi Shin, following her first solo exhibition citizen, not barbarian at VSF Los Angeles. She was born in South Korea in 1963, and lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Shin will present new works in a group show at Jeffrey Deitch, LA this September and at Barbatti Gallery in Venice, Italy this November. Currently, her work is on view at Galerie Marguo, Paris, France. Inquire about Kyungmi Shin.

Working with painting, sculpture, and photography, Shin explores various histories, identities, and migrations by interrogating colonial, capitalist, and religious global expansion and its effect. Speaking about Shin's practice in her catalog citizen, not barbarian, curator jill moniz writes, “The sublime is found in interstitial spaces Shin formally and physically creates to situate and juxtapose the duality of lived experience with theoretical/historical discourse. Her mastery as a painter allows them to be suspended in the same liminal plane, even while we understand that dominant cultures like the west and Christianity hierarchically considers its meanings and narratives as more accurate and important. What she offers us is the opportunity to unpack the nexus of contact, engagement and ownership that visual language permits when naming and telling are hard to do.”

Kyungmi Shin received an MFA from UC Berkeley, California in 1995. Shin has presented works at Orange County Museum of Art, California; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, California; Art Sonje Center, Seoul; Japanese American National Art Museum, Los Angeles; and Torrance Art Museum, California. Shin has received numerous grants including California Community Foundation Grant, Durfee Grant, Pasadena City Individual Artist Fellowship, and Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Artist in Residence Grants. Her work is part of the permanent collections at the Getty Center, Los Angeles, and the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. She has completed over 20 public artworks, and her most recent public video sculpture was installed at the Netflix headquarters in Los Angeles, California in 2018.

For inquiries about the work of Kyungmi Shin, please contact Programming Director Patricia Cariño Valdez, patricia@vsf.la.