Grim Park

Grim Park overlays his personal narrative onto the traditional format of Korean Buddhist painting. Within the sacred framework of religious iconography, he interweaves his queer identity and lived experiences. The artist has stated that his practice stems from a central question: “In a society structured by binary frameworks, can genderqueer individuals be accepted equally without discrimination?” By drawing upon tradition to speak to the present, Park forges a new mythology for those relegated to the margins—at the point where past and present collide.

Grim Park earned his BFA in Buddhist Art from Dongguk University. In 2022, he was selected as a finalist for the 22nd Songeun Art Award, and his works have since been added to the collections of major institutions, including the OCI Museum of Art and the Sunpride Foundation. He has held solo exhibitions at THEO, Studio Concrete, etc. Park has also participated in group shows at the Ilmin Museum of Art, OCI Museum of Art, and other key venues, steadily expanding his distinct artistic terrain.

At the heart of Park’s practice is a ‘reinterpretation’ of Buddhist mythology. His signature series ‘ShimHoDo (The Search for Tiger)’ draws from the canonical narrative of the ‘Ten Ox-Herding Pictures,’ a classic Zen parable that depicts a young boy’s journey to enlightenment through the search for an ox. In Park’s version, the ‘ox’ is replaced by a ‘tiger’ and a “bodhisattva,” thereby reconfiguring the positions of those who give and receive enlightenment. By doing so, the artist connects the figure of the tiger—excluded from becoming human in the Dangun myth[1]—to the marginalized position of queer identity. The labor-intensive process of layering pigments and drawing fine lines on silk becomes, for the artist, both a devotional offering and a meditative act.

The artist describes his practice as “existing on the threshold between the conservative world of Buddhist painting and the genderqueer community.” His work has been critized to be ‘profane’ by some, while others have dismissed it as ‘too traditional to be contemporary art.’ Yet, what sustains his practice, Park says, is the voice of someone who once told him, “My existence felt a little less strange.” It is for those unnamed individuals—those who dwell on the margins—that he continues to create contemporary icons rooted in spirituality.

At this year’s Kiaf, Grim Park presents ‘Simhodo: Chosen’ alongside his series ’44 (Sasa)’ where narratives unfold through symbolic objects in the absence of human figures. Reflecting on ‘Chosen’, Park explains: “By inverting the traditional meaning of ‘selection,’ I wanted to recast it as the story of a genderqueer subject who claims the right to choose themselves.” Before Park’s works, viewers are met with an unfamiliar yet striking realization: that enlightment can arise not apart from, but within the very currents of desire and inner turbulence. By interweaving ‘sacred’ and the ‘profane’, his paintings quietly pose a vital question: What might a world look like in which difference is not merely endured, but allowed to exist together?

[1] In Korea’s founding myth, both a bear and a tiger undergo a spiritual test in order to become human. The bear endures and is ultimately transformed, giving rise to Dangun, the legendary progenitor of the Korean nation. However, the tiger fails the test and retreats; its exclusion from the origin narrative has since become a potent symbol of marginality, connecting with LGBT interpretations in Park’s art.

Shimhodo – Chosen, Korean traditional painting on silk, 70 × 92 cm, 2018