Solar Grounds: Yi Yunyi

《태양의 자리 Solar Grounds》begins with a question: Can an art space become a site of spiritual exchange?  Rather than presupposing a religious object or doctrine, the exhibition approaches this as an advocacy for an art that arises from a devout attitude toward life itself. Each work occupies the exhibition space not as a substitute for faith, but as a sensory mode of expression.

Yi Yunyi’s practice unfolds within an ethic of staying-with-an-awareness-of-leaving a condition akin to that of an artist-in-residence. Within this framework, her works emerge as a method of recording traces of relation and encounter within an unfinished journey.

Meanwhile, the inward-facing window along the descent to the gallery, and the stained-glass-inspired structures installed within the exhibition, invert the traditional orientation of sacred architecture. The direction of sanctity seems to turn from heaven back toward the ground, embracing the material and sensorial qualities of the earth.

At the same time, the exhibition interprets both the sites of recording and the art space of presentation through the lens of community. It invites an ethics of attunement listening to one another, pausing, and looking together. 《태양의 자리 Solar Grounds》 is, in this sense, a space where such attunement quietly takes place.

Yi Yunyi studied Creative Writing and Combined Media in Seoul and New York. She held her first solo exhibition, A Round Turn and Two Half-Hitches, at Insa Art Space in 2014, followed by CLIENT (Art Sonje Project #3, Art Sonje Center, 2018), the same year she was awarded the Doosan Yonkang Arts Award. Her major solo exhibitions include All Survived (DOOSAN Gallery, Seoul, 2019), and A Son Older Than His Father (DOOSAN Gallery, New York, 2021). Her visual portfolio was featured in the Fall 2021 issue of Chicago Review, in a special section highlighting contemporary Korean poetry and women poets. In 2023, she published the artist book Gravity toward the Island, based on her research on Jeju Island.