Ha Haengeun (하행은, 河杏銀)
Contemporary Artist based in Seoul, Korea
Born in Jindo, Korea, she spent her early childhood there before moving to Seoul, where she now lives and works.
Ha Haengeun’s practice began with questions about death. Confronted with the loss of a loved one and the limits of human life, she found herself asking where life comes from, why we are born and disappear, and what it means to exist. Over time, however, these questions gradually shifted from death itself to life—how we come into being, how we are shaped through relationships, and how existence is continuously transformed.
Working across painting and ceramic sculpture, Ha explores the invisible connections between people, animals, plants, objects, memory, and time. Rather than depicting isolated beings or fixed narratives, she creates spaces where different forms of life encounter one another, forming new relationships and meanings. These spaces are not representations of a particular place, but symbolic grounds where life is continuously becoming.
A recurring figure in her practice is the Old Child, a symbolic presence that represents the human condition rather than a specific individual. Whether through figures, still life, imagined landscapes, or forms that gradually move toward abstraction, each body of work emerges from the same ongoing inquiry into life, relationships, and becoming.
Rather than treating painting and ceramic sculpture as separate disciplines, Ha approaches them as interconnected ways of thinking and making. Through her practice, she explores the unseen relationships that bind life together, inviting viewers to reflect on the human condition as something continuously shaped through relationships, transformation, and coexistence.
Statement
From what is right, to the point where that direction, aspiration, or attitude toward life leads one to choose a particular aesthetic —
Recognizing and understanding abstraction as a metaphor for an individual’s way of thinking may be the essence of art. And in the sense that it can transform a being’s perception and way of life, perhaps art is as beautiful as love and as enduring as a fable.
I was inspired by the attitude of a person who reflects on what is right. And I asked myself: then, what is the “right” thing that I am painting?
Perhaps it is a question about the direction inherent in life itself.
However, the “rightness” of life that I speak of does not mean an ideal state or goodness. Life contains pain, coincidence, loss, and death. I seek to contemplate the very way life exists and transforms while embracing all of these contradictions and imperfections.
The beings in my work — where child and old age, beginning and end, birth and death coexist within a single form — are not beings that have resolved contradiction, but rather resemble life itself: a form of existence that continues while carrying contradiction within it.
Therefore, my work is not about depicting something that is “right,” but rather about discovering the positivity, inevitability, and beauty inherent in the way life exists and continues.
My work contemplates states in which becoming and dissolution, birth and disappearance, finitude and continuity coexist. What I seek to express is not the rightness of life itself, but the beauty of life’s way of continuing — embracing even its own imperfections. July 2026
옳은 것으로부터 시작하여, 그 방향성 혹은 열망, 혹은 삶의 태도가 하나의 미학을 선택하게 되기까지ㅡ.
개인의 사유를 은유하는 추상성을 인식하고 이해하게 되는 것은 예술의 정수일 것이다. 그리고 그것이 한 존재의 인식과 삶의 변화를 이끌어낸다는 점에서, 예술은 사랑만큼 아름답고 우화만큼 오래 남는 것이 아닐까.
나는 옳은 것을 고민하는 한 사람의 태도에서 영감을 받았다. 그리고 나 자신에게 질문했다. 그렇다면 나는 어떤 옳은 것을 그리고 있는가.
아마 그것은 생명 자체가 가진 방향에 대한 질문일 것이다.
하지만 내가 말하는 생명의 옳음은 이상적인 상태나 선함을 의미하지 않는다. 생명에는 고통과 우연, 상실과 죽음까지 포함되어 있다. 나는 그 모든 모순과 불완전함을 품은 채 존재하고 변화해가는 생명의 방식 자체를 바라보고자 한다.
아이와 노인, 시작과 끝, 탄생과 죽음이 하나의 형상 안에 공존하는 나의 작업 속 존재들은 모순을 해결한 존재가 아니라, 모순을 품은 채 살아가는 생명의 모습에 가깝다.
그래서 나의 작업은 ‘옳은 것’을 묘사하는 일이 아니라, 생명이 존재하고 지속되는 방식 안에 내재한 어떤 긍정성과 필연성, 그리고 아름다움을 발견하는 일에 가깝다.
나의 작업은 생성과 소멸, 탄생과 사라짐, 유한함과 지속성이 공존하는 상태를 바라본다. 내가 표현하고자 하는 것은 생명 자체의 옳음이 아니라, 불완전함까지 품은 채 계속되어가는 생명의 방식이 가진 아름다움이다. 2026년 7월