• Julia Moon’s paintings explore the shifting boundaries between body, object and space.

    South Korean artist Julia Moon explores the relationship between the body, objects and the spaces they occupy. Born in South Korea and raised in Canada, Moon’s experience of moving between places informs her interest in displacement and the ways familiarity can shift according to context. Her paintings consider objects and bodies in states of transition, where recognisable forms become increasingly ambiguous and their boundaries begin to dissolve.

     

    Moon is interested in the physical and metaphorical malleability of space. Her paintings transform familiar objects and forms into unfamiliar states, creating a tension between what can be recognised and what remains obscure. Bodies appear to bend, fragment and reform within the picture plane, challenging a fixed understanding of their physical boundaries. Through this shifting relationship between figure, object and space, Moon considers how identity can be altered by the environments and structures in which it exists.

     

    Construction, deconstruction and reconstruction are central to Moon’s process. Rather than treating the painted image as a fixed representation, she allows forms to develop through a continual process of alteration. Shapes are built up, disrupted and reconfigured, creating paintings that hold a sense of movement and transformation. The resulting forms exist somewhere between the familiar and the abstract, retaining traces of their original identities while becoming something new.

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    This sense of instability extends to Moon’s approach to the picture plane. Space is not treated as a passive setting, but as something that can be manipulated and redefined. Forms appear to occupy shifting positions within it, creating an uncertain relationship between figure and ground. Her paintings consequently capture a liminal state in which bodies and objects seem to be continually moving between states of being.

    Moon’s practice reflects her own peripatetic experience, having been born in South Korea, raised in Canada and more recently moving between Seoul and London. Her work is shaped by this constant movement and an openness to new environments, using painting to consider how objects, bodies and identities can be transformed through displacement.

     

    Moon received her BFA in Fine Art from the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford, in 2023 and is currently completing an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art, London.

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