Preface | In the Liminal Light of an Imagined Garden

In the liminal spaces where time folds into timelessness and life meets mortality, Sung Min Woo’s art takes form. Sung’s debut solo exhibition in Singapore at Gallery Ima is more than a geographic milestone—it is a passage into an in-between realm where cultures, philosophies, and ecological ideas converge.

Sung Min Woo is an accomplished Korean artist recognised by multiple awards. Born in 1974, Sung Min Woo trained in Oriental Painting at Hongik University, earning both her BFA and MFA, before completing a Ph.D. in Art Education at Korea National University of Education. This combined foundation of practice and theory shapes her distinctive approach. Working with silk, natural pigments, and powdered gold and silver, she draws on East Asian artistic traditions while reinterpreting them through a contemporary ecological lens. Her paintings go beyond representing nature; they interrogate its conditions, exploring what it means to emerge, endure, and ultimately disappear—ideas that resonate across cultures and time.

Working on silk, Sung layers natural pigments and dusts her surfaces with gold and silver powder. These metallic interventions do more than embellish; they suspend time, creating a luminous membrane where fleeting moments attain a sense of permanence. Her technique of saturation, repetition, and slow accumulation reflects the rhythms of germination, growth, decay, and renewal. Each stroke becomes a meditative gesture linking continuity with impermanence.

Grass is Sung’s enduring motif - modest yet resilient, thriving in overlooked spaces. She often depicts naturalised species, plants rooted in Korean soil but originating elsewhere, as metaphors for movement, adaptation, and coexistence. Once foreign, these species integrate into their environments, enriching ecological diversity. Through this imagery, Sung develops a visual lexicon of interdependence, where ecological processes mirror social dynamics.

Central to Sung’s practice is the notion of oikos—the ancient Greek word that symbolises a foundational space of life where relationships coexist. In her work, oikos becomes a site where individual and collective existence intertwine. Her compositions unfold as living ecosystems: dense, shimmering fields where grasses and wildflowers weave narratives of survival, adaptation, and transformation. Each blade speaks of resilience and care, reminding us that life endures through connection.

This resonance is particularly alive in Singapore. Like these naturalised plants, Singapore’s identity has been shaped through migration and exchanges. Its strength lies in diversity, resilience, and adaptability. Sung’s work offers a quiet parallel: the beauty of integration and the unexpected harmony that emerges when disparate lives share the same ground.

Sung’s exhibition, Bouquet For You, invites us into a space of stillness and reflection. Shimmering surfaces and grasses rendered with exquisite precision blur the boundary between reality and dream, urging us to pause, look deeply, and contemplate our place within an interconnected ecological and existential web.

Learn more about the artist by visiting our Artists page.