Statement

In my painting practice, I strive to create artworks that engage with contemporary socio-political discourse while honoring the history and the tradition of painting. My latest portrait painting series, Room of Her Own, is a profound extension of this exploration, a homage to the achievements of many accomplished women. The series’ title draws inspiration from Virginia Woolf’s text in A Room of One’s Own. This book underscores the critical prerequisites of financial autonomy and personal agency for unfettered creative pursuits. Woolf’s statement that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write,” resonates deeply with the subjects of my portrait—women engaged in creative pursuits, posed in the “Grand Manner,” evoking echoes of historical figurative masterpieces enshrined within museum walls.

Interviews and research into their working lives generate ways for me to render pictorially—through allusions, icons, objects, patterns, and symbols—the rich personhood of my subjects. I depict the human figure in a meticulous realist style at the center of the compositions within a confined but shifting space. This metaphorical and symbolic “room” serves as a poignant allegory for the specific yet precarious terrain of women’s creative autonomy, set against the persistent sexist assumptions. The figures in my paintings are surrounded by design elements from diverse cultures, a testament to the rich history of transnational cultural exchanges. Embracing the feminist legacy of the Pattern and Decoration Movement, I create heterogeneous, colorful, and detailed paintings with recurring, multicultural motifs. To further enhance the effects of interweaving realities, I use a large array of techniques, including exposed under-drawings, hyperrealism, hard-edged abstract elements, and thick impasto in various media.

The combination of representational fidelity and non-traditional geometries in my artwork celebrates the imagination’s role in shaping a plural and malleable reality. This defamiliarized space invites extended, sensual encounters with the paintings, where diverse representational modes coexist, fostering the pursuit of a more utopian and egalitarian existence.

Bio
Born in Seoul, Korea, Kira Nam Greene lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, her MFA from the School of Visual Arts, and her BA in International Relations from Seoul National University. Prior to becoming an artist, Greene earned her Ph. D in Political Science from Stanford University, specializing in Political Economy in East Asia, and taught a wide variety of subject matters in Political Economy both in academic and business settings. Greene has shown her work widely at venues such as the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Sheldon Museum of Art, Muskegon Museum of Art, Montgomery Museum of Fine Art, Orlando Museum of Art, Reading Public Art Museum, Brown University, Salisbury University, City College of New York (CUNY), Wave Hill, Bronx Museum of Art, Noyes Museum, Contemporary Art Matters, Lyons Wier Gallery, Accola Griefen Gallery, Gallery Korea, A.I.R. Gallery, and Jane Lombard Gallery. She is a finalist for the Outwin Boochever Portrait Award 2022 and currently, the exhibition is touring major museum venues around the country. In 2019, Greene was a finalist for the inaugural Bennett Prize for female figurative painters. She was a Stewart MacMillan Chair in Painting at Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD in 2017-18 and was a part-time faculty of the Fine Arts MFA Program at Parsons School of Design. Her work has been covered in publications such as American Art Collector, Fine Arts Connoisseur, Smithsonian Magazine, Visual Arts Journal, Artnet News, Art F City, BmoreArt, Wallpaper, W Magazine, Lincoln Star Journal, Art21 Blog, Hyphen Magazine, The Korea Daily, and New York Art Beat.

You can view here most recent interview with Contemporary Art Matters here.