Choe Sooryeon

Major Works

Seonnyeo (celestial maiden), Taepyungnyeo, etc.

The "Seonnyeo" series and "Taepyungnyeo" series both depict female figures shared by Northeast Asia. Seonnyeo and Taepyungnyeo often appear in classical tales as beautiful and gentle young women and are reproduced in modern media as cliché images.

Sooryeon Choe, being of Northeast Asian descent influenced by Western culture, has an ambivalent attitude towards the subjects she paints. These series recontextualize female figures shared by Northeast Asia, being critical and mocking of the passive femininity, clichéd nature, and incomplete representation of these images while simultaneously feeling nostalgia for them and sorrow for their imperfect crudeness.

Sutra Copying for the Hangul Generation, Pictures for Use and Pleasure, etc. Sooryeon Choe transcribes and translates Chinese classical texts, illustrations, religious texts, and theories on painting onto canvas, such as inexplicable vanity of death, interpretations of fate based on physiognomy, and the characteristics of 'good painting' as described in classical art theory. She feels ignorance, doubt, and sorrow in these texts, which talk about a 'profound world' or 'good painting', doubting the irrational and unscientific worldview of the classics after modernization and feeling sorrow for the absurdity of the world.