[K-ART FOCUS] For Choi Sung-im, bread ties become golden blanket

Choi Sung-im’s Golden Blanket is on view at Sunhyewon in Seoul’s Samcheong-dong as part of PODO Museum’s A Note From Trembling Things during Frieze Seoul Art Week. The 6.2-by-4.8-meter installation is handwoven from thousands of gold wire ties used to seal bread bags and took more than a month to make. Choi said the work reflects her interest in fragile materials, domestic life and the threshold between inside and outside. She also described art as an ongoing practice of making, unmaking and beginning again.

Golden Blanket measures 6.2 by 4.8 meters and took more than a month to make by hand.

The work is woven from thousands of gold wire ties used to seal bags of sliced bread.

The installation anchors PODO Museum’s A Note From Trembling Things at Sunhyewon in Seoul’s Samcheong-dong.

The exhibition also features works by Mona Hatoum and Kim Yun-soo.

Choi Sung-im was born in 1977 and trained in Western-style painting at Ewha Womans University.

Published Sep 18, 2026 12:00 pm KST

By gathering and weaving the disposable, Choi turns rhythms of ordinary life into language of endurance

Choi Sung-im's "Golden Blanket" (2026) installed at Sunhyewon in Seoul for the group exhibition "A Note From Trembling Things" / Courtesy of PODO Museum

This is the third in a series spotlighting Korean artists whose distinct creative worlds are coming into focus in the country’s vibrant autumn art season. —ED.

At Sunhyewon, the secluded traditional Korean house-turned-art space in Seoul’s Samcheong-dong, a glittering carpet unfurls across the lobby. Looking closer, however, Choi Sung-im’s “Golden Blanket” (2026) reveals itself to be handwoven from thousands of the gold wire ties used to seal bags of sliced bread.

The 6.2-by-4.8-meter installation, which took more than a month to make by hand, anchors PODO Museum’s “A Note From Trembling Things.”

“For me, a blanket is not simply a household item,” Choi said during a press preview during Frieze Seoul Art Week. "When I open my eyes in the morning, it is the first landscape that I see and it touches my body — a world larger than my body.” She wanted to place it at a threshold, she said, such as wooden floor of "hanok" traditional Korean house, where interior and exterior meet.

The exhibition explores the ways people inhabit the world together, featuring works by Choi, Lebanese-British artist Mona Hatoum and Korean artist Kim Yun-soo.

“Every being changes, and perhaps it is because we change that we are vulnerable,” Choi said.

Choi Sung-im poses at her latest solo exhibition "The Breath of Things" at OKNP in Seoul. Courtesy of the artist

Working with 'fragile materials'

Choi mainly works with what she calls "fragile materials," such as onion sacks, plastic balls from children’s ball pits and other industrial items that are light, inexpensive and easily discarded.

Through cutting, tying, weaving and accumulating, the materials grow into larger forms.

Working with ordinary objects and making installations, however, was not her first calling.

Born in 1977, she was trained in Western-style painting at Ewha Womans University and pursued a career using those techniques.

Later, as a mother of four children, her responsibilities and the environment in which she found herself led her to reconsider her choices.

“White canvases felt too far from my day, too far from places where my time was flowing,” she recalled during a recent interview with The Korea Times. “I wanted the kimchi soup that spilled and the stains of life to become not stains but beautiful patterns.”

She began working with what was close at hand. Her domestic environment did not become a subject to illustrate but the condition that changed her artistic language.

“I had no desire to reproduce everyday life. I wanted to turn it over — to make familiar things strange, almost uncanny,” she said.

Fragile materials offered a means of thinking and enduring by using them to create large-scale installations.

Choi held her first solo exhibition in 2012 at the age of 35, when she was already raising her four children.

“I was kind of an artist on vacation,” she said of the years before her first exhibition. “I was doing something else at home. I was thinking a great deal about what it means to be an artist: ‘Can I be an artist only when I work on something? Or when presenting something to the world?’”

Choi Sung-im weaves wire ties used to seal bags of bread at her studio in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, Wednesday. Korea Times photo by Lee Hae-rin

Simplicity is a deliberate choice that defines her work, the artist said.

“There is no special technique in my work,” she declared in the modest studio where she handwove "Golden Blanket" — now featured in one of Seoul’s most sought-after art exhibitions.

“It is not about extraordinary craftsmanship or highly elaborate embroidery. It is a very simple back-and-forth action, connecting an end to a beginning.”

What matters most, she added, is a “shift in thought.”

Choi’s early installations loomed large, not to create spectacle but because small, vulnerable things need to gather together in order to survive.

“Like ivy growing over a wall or barnacles attaching themselves to a rock, my work resembles the way small and fragile beings find a place in the world and endure,” she said.

Choi Sung-im's "Endless Trees" (2024), made of onion sacks and plastic balls, is on display at "PLASTIC PARADISE!?" at Goyang Aram Nuri Arts Center in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province. Courtesy of the artist

Career and motherhood

Choi was reluctant to speak publicly about being a mother until recently, concerned that her work would be reduced to a particular framing around family.

“I worried that people would stop at one sentence: the artist who made bread-tie work because she raised children at home,” she said. “But I also began to feel that without explaining my situation, people might not understand why I spoke so persistently about inside and outside.”

Her eldest daughter, Kim Seo-young, wrote the introduction to her mother’s artistic brochure. In it, she wrote that her mother moves between three worlds: "her family, her identity and her vision.”

"However, she has also been part of one world — an intricately intertwined, not segregated world," according to the daughter in the introduction. “She is my mom. She is a woman. She is an artist."

In 2014, the family published a collection of essays, “Four Pairs of Eyes,” in which Choi and her children wrote about what it meant to be both a mother and an artist.

They described how Choi's motherhood and art found their places at the kitchen table, where the family ate, studied, read and drew together. As soon as the children went to bed, she returned to the same table to cut, stitch, draw or weave for an upcoming exhibition.

For Choi and her children, art was never confined to a distant studio. It was “a way of living together.”

"Four Pairs of Eyes," a Korean and English essay collection by Choi Sung-im and her children Kim Seo-young, Ji-heon, Jeong-min and Ji-hoo / Courtesy of the artist

"My mom was an artist who fell in love with art long before she became a mother. She was not planning to give it up even amidst the responsibilities of raising not one, two, but four children," Choi's daughter Ji-heon wrote in the book. "The commitment and devotion she shows to art is more than anyone can imagine, something that only those close would fully comprehend."

Exhibitions sometimes feel ephemeral — painstakingly built and then swept away when an installation ends. Choi sees that impermanence as part of installation art’s “theatrical charm” in that a work exists fully only once, in a particular place and moment.

Watching people tend their gardens outside her Suwon studio, however, has changed how she thinks about what remains. Each year, they turn the soil, clear the plants and prepare the ground anew. The season’s labor is not erased; it stays in the body as knowledge.

“For me, the same is true of art,” Choi said. “An ongoing practice of making, unmaking and beginning again.”

崔成任（Choi Sung-im）的作品《金色毯子》（Golden Blanket）正在首尔三清洞的善惠苑展出，作为弗里兹首尔艺术周期间PODO美术馆“来自颤抖之物的笔记”（A Note From Trembling Things）展览的一部分。这件6.2米×4.8米的装置作品由数千根用于封口面包袋的金线手工编织而成，耗时一个多月才完成。崔成任表示，这件作品反映了她对易碎材料、家庭生活以及内外边界的关注。她还将艺术描述为一种持续不断的创造、解构和重新开始的实践。

金色毯子尺寸为 6.2 米 x 4.8 米，纯手工制作，耗时一个多月。

这件作品由数千根用于封口面包片的金线编织而成。

该装置艺术作品是 PODO 博物馆在首尔三清洞善惠院举办的“来自颤抖之物的笔记”展览的核心。

展览还展出了莫娜·哈图姆和金允洙的作品。

崔成任出生于1977年，曾在梨花女子大学接受西式绘画训练。

发布于2026年9月18日韩国时间下午12:00

崔通过收集和编织废弃物，将日常生活的节奏转化为一种关于忍耐的语言。

崔成任的作品《金色毯子》（2026）在首尔善惠苑美术馆展出，作为群展“颤抖之物的笔记”的一部分 / 图片由PODO美术馆提供

这是聚焦韩国艺术家的系列报道之三，这些艺术家们独特的创作世界正随着韩国充满活力的秋季艺术季而逐渐为人所知。——编者注

在首尔三清洞的静谧传统韩屋改建的艺术空间——善惠苑，一条闪闪发光的毯子铺满了大厅。然而，仔细观察，崔成任的作品《金色毯子》（2026）却展现出它是由数千根用于封口切片面包袋的金线手工编织而成。

这件长 6.2 米、宽 4.8 米的装置作品，耗时一个多月手工制作完成，是 PODO 博物馆“来自颤抖之物的笔记”展览的核心。

“对我而言，毯子不仅仅是一件家居用品，”崔在弗里兹首尔艺术周的媒体预览会上说道，“当我清晨睁开双眼时，它是映入眼帘的第一道风景，它触碰着我的身体——一个比我的身体更广阔的世界。”她表示，她想把毯子放置在某种门槛处，比如韩屋（韩国传统房屋）的木地板上，那里是室内外交汇的地方。

本次展览探索了人们共同生活在这个世界上的方式，展出了崔、黎巴嫩裔英国艺术家莫娜·哈图姆和韩国艺术家金允洙的作品。

“每个生命体都会发生变化，也许正是因为我们会发生变化，我们才会变得脆弱，”崔说道。

崔成任在首尔OKNP画廊举办的最新个展“万物之息”上摆姿势拍照。图片由艺术家提供。

使用“易碎材料”

崔主要使用她所谓的“易碎材料”，例如洋葱袋、儿童球池中的塑料球以及其他轻便、廉价且容易丢弃的工业物品。

通过切割、捆绑、编织和堆积，材料逐渐演变成更大的形状。

然而，利用普通物品进行创作和制作装置艺术并不是她最初的追求。

她出生于 1977 年，在梨花女子大学接受西式绘画训练，并运用这些技巧从事艺术创作。

后来，作为四个孩子的母亲，她的责任和她所处的环境促使她重新考虑自己的选择。

“白色的画布感觉离我的日常生活太远了，离我时光流逝的地方太远了，”她在最近接受《韩国时报》采访时回忆道。“我希望洒出来的泡菜汤和生活中的污渍，不再是污渍，而是美丽的图案。”

她开始就地取材进行创作。她的家庭环境并没有成为她描绘的主题，反而成为改变她艺术语言的契机。

“我不想重现日常生活。我想颠覆它——让熟悉的事物变得陌生，近乎怪诞，”她说。

易碎材料提供了一种思考和坚持的方式，人们利用这些材料来创作大型装置艺术。

崔于 2012 年举办了她的首次个人画展，当时她 35 岁，并且已经抚养了四个孩子。

“我当时就像个度假的艺术家，”她谈到首次展览前的那几年时说。“我在家做着其他的事情。我一直在思考成为一名艺术家意味着什么：‘我只有在创作的时候才能算艺术家吗？或者只有把作品展示给世人的时候才能算艺术家吗？’”

周三，在京畿道水原市的工作室里，崔成任正在编织用于封面包袋的铁丝扎带。韩国时报记者李海琳摄。

这位艺术家表示，简约是她刻意选择的风格，也是她作品的特色。

“我的作品没有什么特别的技巧，”她在自己简朴的工作室里说道，她在这里手工编织了“金色毯子”——这件作品现在正在首尔最受欢迎的艺术展览之一中展出。

“这无关乎精湛的工艺或极其复杂的刺绣。这只是一个非常简单的来回动作，将终点与起点连接起来。”

她补充说，最重要的是“思维方式的转变”。

崔的早期装置作品体量巨大，并非为了制造奇观，而是因为渺小、脆弱的事物需要聚集在一起才能生存。

“就像常春藤爬满墙壁，藤壶附着在岩石上一样，我的作品也体现了渺小而脆弱的生物如何在世界上找到自己的位置并生存下去，”她说。

崔成任（Choi Sung-im）的作品《无尽的树》（Endless Trees，2024）由洋葱袋和塑料球制成，正在京畿道高阳市高阳市阿兰努里艺术中心举办的“塑料天堂！？”展览中展出。图片由艺术家提供。

事业与母职

崔直到最近才开始公开谈论为人母的经历，她担心自己的作品会被简化为围绕家庭的特定框架。

“我担心人们只会简单地说一句话：这位艺术家因为在家带孩子，所以创作了面包领带作品，”她说。“但我也开始觉得，如果不解释我的情况，人们可能就无法理解我为什么如此执着地谈论‘内部’和‘外部’这两个概念。”

她的大女儿金瑞英为母亲的艺术宣传册写了序言。序言中写道，母亲游走于三个世界之间：“她的家庭、她的身份和她的愿景”。

“然而，她也始终身处同一个世界——一个错综复杂、而非彼此隔绝的世界，”女儿在引言中写道。“她是我的母亲。她是一位女性。她是一位艺术家。”

2014 年，崔和她的孩子们出版了一本散文集《四双眼睛》，书中他们讲述了作为母亲和艺术家意味着什么。

他们描述了崔女士的母亲身份和艺术创作如何在厨房餐桌上找到归宿，一家人在那里一起吃饭、学习、阅读和绘画。孩子们入睡后，她便回到同一张桌子旁，为即将到来的展览进行裁剪、缝纫、绘画或编织。

对于崔和她的孩子们来说，艺术从来不局限于遥远的画室，而是一种“共同生活的方式”。

《四双眼睛》，崔成琳及其子女金瑞英、金智宪、金正民和金智厚的韩英双语散文集 / 图片由艺术家提供

“我妈妈是一位艺术家，早在成为母亲之前就热爱艺术。即使要承担养育四个孩子的重任，她也从未想过放弃艺术，”崔智宪的女儿在书中写道。“她对艺术的投入和奉献远超任何人的想象，只有亲近的人才能真正理解。”

展览有时给人一种转瞬即逝的感觉——精心搭建，却在装置结束后被扫除。崔认为这种短暂性正是装置艺术“戏剧魅力”的一部分，因为一件作品只在特定的地点和时刻完整存在一次。

然而，看着人们在她位于水原的工作室外照料花园，改变了她对“留存之物”的看法。每年，他们翻土、清理植物，重新耕作。当季的劳作并未被抹去；它以知识的形式留在了人们的身体里。

“对我而言，艺术也是如此，”崔说。“它是一个不断创作、解构和重新开始的过程。”