ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Kim Westfall (b. Seoul, KR) is a New York-based interdisciplinary artist working across tapestry, installation, and social intervention. Their work is an intuitive cartography of the inbetween; seeking connections between the personal and the historical to create a psychological and emotional map between disparate chronologies and places. She has presented work at White Columns in New York, the Korean Demilitarized Zone with Real DMZ Project, George Benias Gallery in Athens, GR, and No Place Gallery in Ohio. Her work has been featured in publications such as Art Forum, Artnet, Hyperallergic, BHMagazino, and the Boston Globe. She has received grants and participated in residencies through the support of NYFA (New York Foundation for the Arts), Jerome Foundation (Minneapolis/NYC), Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism of Republic of Korea, and Cheorwon Cultural Foundation (Cheorwon, KR). She will be joining the cohort of research fellows at the Northeast Asia Art Archive in Spring 2026.
TAPESTRY
My tapestries push formal boundaries by merging the gesture of painting with the tactility of fiber using a hand-tufting gun to create large scale works of pleated ribbons and yarn that strike a balance between push and pull painting and the schematics of woven tapestries. I draw from a personal archive of travel research (writing and photographs) to examine competing narratives’ attempts to quantify an unknowable past. I intuitively punching layers of sheer ribbons and yarns through a substrate fabric. This process allows for complete gestural freedom, forgoing the flattened construction of loom-woven tapestries in favor of a surface that frays, bulges and undulates. Works are actively negotiated in the moment, in a chain reaction from one mark to the next.
I attempt to synthesize the uncanny and mundane atmosphere of the Korean Demilitarized Zone, the labyrinthine scale of the virgin nuclear military facility 816 in rural Chongqing, and other sites of historical significance to Korean diasporic history. My work embraces all interpretations of scale (historical, personal, and temporal) to reframe conceptions of the site.
three at eight sixteen
(2025-ongoing)
In August 2025, I traveled to the 816 Nuclear Military Plant on the outskirts of Chongqing, China to experience the atmosphere and overlapping chronologies of Cold War history. Through research and conversations with local experts, I gained access to the largest manmade tunnel system in the world. The geopolitical and historical relevance added an eerie valence to the grand infrastructure and suspended status as a never used facilitiy. Tunnels, air raid shelters, and borderlines function as evocative spaces of psychological tension and libidinal power in my work. The figures from my Oppa series (see below) re-emerge as amorphous entities, blending in to towering infrastructures. I find personal kinship with these spaces as an individual swallowed up in the historical tides of my time.
three at eight sixteen 4, 2025.
Tufted organza and silk ribbon, chenille and cotton yarn 75.36 x 108.92 cm / 29.67 x 42.88 in
Tufted organza and silk ribbon, chenille and cotton yarn 75.36 x 108.92 cm / 29.67 x 42.88 in
three at eight sixteen 3, 2025.
Tufted organza ribbon, chenille and cotton yarn 84.46 x 109.22 cm / 33.25 x 43 in
Tufted organza ribbon, chenille and cotton yarn 84.46 x 109.22 cm / 33.25 x 43 in
three at eight sixteen 1, 2025.
Tufted organza ribbon, 72.39 x 83.82 cm / 28.5 x 33 in
Tufted organza ribbon, 72.39 x 83.82 cm / 28.5 x 33 in
three at eight sixteen 2, 2025.
Tufted organza ribbon, chenille and cotton yarn 85.09 x 104.78 cm / 33.5 x 41.25 in
Tufted organza ribbon, chenille and cotton yarn 85.09 x 104.78 cm / 33.5 x 41.25 in
Oppa
(2022-ongoing)
This work developed from intense material experimentation and seven years research traveling to historical sites in South Korea. Anonymous figures in pleated skirts occupy atemporal planes, drifting in and out of time as flexible signifiers. They appear in geographies haunted by the past such as Korean War battlesites, US army bases, DMZ bordertowns, and my former residence in Daejeon. Moody night scenes, and the blinding light of military flares color the environments. Questions about whether the past is knowable, and who is worth remembering and forgetting are left unanswered.
Black Hawk Village, Yongsan Garrison.
Tufted organza ribbon, 208.28 x 157.48 cm / 82 x 62 in
Tufted organza ribbon, 208.28 x 157.48 cm / 82 x 62 in
Ice Americano in Seodaemun Tunnel, 2024.
Tufted organza ribbon, 182.88 x 147.32 cm / 72 x 58 in
Tufted organza ribbon, 182.88 x 147.32 cm / 72 x 58 in
Heartbreak Ridge, 2023.
Tufted organza ribbon, 109.2 x 137.1 cm / 43 x 54 in
Tufted organza ribbon, 109.2 x 137.1 cm / 43 x 54 in
Sunset at the Pine Club 1, 2023.
Tufted organza ribbon, 144.78 x 193.04 cm / 57 x 76 in
Tufted organza ribbon, 144.78 x 193.04 cm / 57 x 76 in
Lounging in the Punchbowl, 2023.
Tufted organza ribbon, 146.05 x 193.04 cm / 57.5 x 76 in
Tufted organza ribbon, 146.05 x 193.04 cm / 57.5 x 76 in
It’s Daejeon, 2022.
Tufted organza ribbon, 170.18 x 132.08 cm / 67 x 52 in
Tufted organza ribbon, 170.18 x 132.08 cm / 67 x 52 in
INSTALLATIONS AND SOCIAL INTERVENTIONS
Cafe Shim
In the Korean DMZ bordertown of Yangji-ri, I staged a one-day cafe inside the village’s air raid shelter called Cafe Shim, inspired by Korean poet, Yi Sang’s failed cafe ventures (Cafe Jebi, Cafe 69) and the high-concept cafes I encountered living in South Korea. Yangjiri’s history as a propaganda village under Park Chung-hee’s New Village Movement in the 1960s informed the potemkin aesthetic of the cafe. Mass produced plastic stools, Maxim instant coffee, pre-packaged pastry, and the ubiquitous toilet paper for napkins found in Korean restaurants were all purchased on Coupang (Korean Amazon) to give a generic impression of a cafe. Visitors animated the shelter, lending Cafe Shim veracity while short-circuiting local memories of the space’s intended purpose. The provisional nature and collective belief in the cafe performed a historical pantomime aligned with the village’s origins.
Yangji-ri / Cheorwon-gun, ROK.
2024
Cafe Shim, 2024.
Installation in the air raid shelter.
Maxim instant coffee, Kanu instant coffee, Hyatt pastry, Konglish plastic stools, crate tables, string LED lights, push lights.
Yangji-ri, Cheorwon-gun, DMZ, ROK.
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Cafe Shim, 2024.
Installation in the air raid shelter.
Maxim instant coffee, Kanu instant coffee, Hyatt pastry, Konglish plastic stools, crate tables, string LED lights, push lights.
Yangji-ri, Cheorwon-gun, DMZ, ROK.
Installation in the air raid shelter.
Maxim instant coffee, Kanu instant coffee, Hyatt pastry, Konglish plastic stools, crate tables, string LED lights, push lights.
Yangji-ri, Cheorwon-gun, DMZ, ROK.
Cafe Shim, 2024.
Installation in the air raid shelter.
Maxim instant coffee, Kanu instant coffee, Hyatt pastry, Konglish plastic stools, crate tables, string LED lights, push lights.
Yangji-ri, Cheorwon-gun, DMZ, ROK.
Spicy Memory
DMZ: Checkpoint
Real DMZ Project
August 31 - September 23 2023
Participating artists:
Onejoon Che, Soyoung Chung, Gimhongsok, HaeAhn Paul Kwon Kajander, Kyungah Ham, Ikkibawikrrr, Su-Mi Jang, Sunny Kim, Makiko Kudo, Hyeseong Kwon, Jaeseok Lee, Jung-hoon Lee, Woosung Lee, Mikael Levin, Minouk Lim, Moon Kyungwon & Jeon Joonho, Na Mira, Ok Seungcheol, Boma Pak, Hyungjin Park, Noh-wan Park, Seonglib, Youngsun Suh, Sikyung Sung, Kim Westfall, Tomoko Yoneda, Kyung Jin Zoh & Hye Ryeong Cho
The DMZ Exhibition: Checkpoint contemplates on how to perceive the division of Korea and the border area through the perspective of contemporary art and diversify its viewpoint. Continuing various artistic attempts that have dealt with the history and reality of division, it will perceive the DMZ as a new cultural creation zone where reality and imagination intersect.
While acknowledging that the contemplation on war, Korea's division, and the formation of the DMZ as the aftermath begins with an understanding of history and politics, the exhibition will approach the matter with a broader viewpoint and sometimes distance itself while going beyond boundaries. These views may be presented in ambiguous and unfamiliar forms or reveal blurred and layered meanings. We hope that the new artistic attempts will expose the reality and paradoxical situation of the DMZ and transcend our rational thinking and general sensibility.
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Spicy Memory attempts to reconcile the virtual, mutable nature of contemporary Korea with the militarized, static DMZ checkpoint. Ribbons (the artist's chosen material for her textile works), red pepper flakes, and fragments of the artist's adoption documents are encased in an acrylic resin record spinning on a turntable. The stylus never makes contact with the record.
Instead, Vera Lynn's We'll Meet Again and Hank Locklin's Geisha Girl play on loop from an unseen source.
The installation of Spicy Memory in a permanent exhibit of an American GI's bunk meditates on the history of Camp Greaves, and the ongoing US-South Korea alliance, and the contradictions of the DMZ as an ideological space, a nature preserve, and military checkpoint.
Spicy memory, 2023.
Acrylic resin, organza ribbon, adoption documents, red pepper flakes, record player.
30.48 cm / 12 in, Camp Greaves- Documenta 3
DMZ Paju, ROK.
Acrylic resin, organza ribbon, adoption documents, red pepper flakes, record player.
30.48 cm / 12 in, Camp Greaves- Documenta 3
DMZ Paju, ROK.
As an Angel-American
A public project about hyphenated American identity funded by NYFA’s City Artist Corps program.
Liberty Island, NJ / Hudson River, NYC
2021
As an Angel-American, 2021.
Digital drawing printed on polyester airplane banner with iron rod lettering
18.288 x 6.096 m / 60 x 20 ft, Liberty Island, NJ, NYC.
Digital drawing printed on polyester airplane banner with iron rod lettering
18.288 x 6.096 m / 60 x 20 ft, Liberty Island, NJ, NYC.