ON VIEW: October 3 - November 26, 2025
OPENING RECEPTION: Friday, October 3, from 6:30-9 PM
Highpoint Center for Printmaking is pleased to present Temporary and Lasting: Works by Yoonmi Nam, a selection of the artist’s prints, ceramics, and installation works. The exhibition is free and open to the public.
Yoonmi Nam | Instant (Jin) | 2025 | Mokuhanga | Edition of 15 | 14 x 10 in.
Yoonmi Nam | Instant (lunch) | 2025 | Mokuhanga | Edition of 15 | 14 x 10 in.
In Temporary and Lasting: Works by Yoonmi Nam, the artist investigates the quiet contradictions found in everyday objects, focusing on their impermanence, cultural significance, and material persistence. Through printmaking and ceramics, Nam reimagines disposable items like Styrofoam take-out containers, plastic bags, yogurt cups, and instant noodle bowls, as still-life subjects and cultural artifacts, drawing attention to their lasting impact despite their fleeting use. The exhibition invites viewers to experience a sense of time that feels both fleeting and enduring, and a sense of place that is at once familiar and unknown.
Yoonmi Nam | Cairn (5 stack) | 2023 | Slip cast porcelain, celadon glaze | 13 x 6 x 6 in.
Nam takes influence from her experiences living across multiple cultures and integrates references to Korean, Japanese, and Chinese art traditions in her work. She draws on Chaekgeori, a Korean still-life painting genre from the Joseon period, and employs traditional Mokuhanga (Japanese woodblock printing) techniques, as well as Korean celadon glazes and references to 17th-century Chinese woodblock printed books. Through this layered approach, Nam creates a web of references that crosses cultures and asks the viewer to examine the momentary nature and ascribed value of our surrounding objects, and the extraordinary way we structure our environments.
Nam will bookend her time at Highpoint by leading a two-day workshop, Introduction to Mokuhanga, on Thursday, October 2 and Saturday October 4. This hands-on class will introduce participants to the traditional Japanese woodblock printing technique Mokuhanga, which Nam uses extensively in her own practice. Space is limited; registration details can be found in the link above.
Yoonmi Nam. Photo by Amelia Smith
Yoonmi Nam (b. 1974) was born in Seoul, South Korea and has studied in Korea, Canada, the United States, and Japan. Nam works primarily in traditional printmaking techniques such as Mokuhanga (Japanese-style water-based woodblock printing) and lithography, and also explores materials like clay, glass, and paper to create three-dimensional still lifes.
She received her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and her BFA from Hong-Ik University in Seoul, Korea. Nam has been awarded residencies at the Mokuhanga Innovation Laboratory in Japan three times to study traditional Japanese woodblock techniques, and she is the recipient of the Keiko Kadota Award for Advancement of Mokuhanga.
She has also participated in artist residencies at Brandywine Workshop and Archives in Philadelphia; Frans Masereel Centrum in Belgium; Kala Art Institute in California; Vermont Studio Center; and a three-year studio residency at Studios Inc. in Kansas City.
Nam’s work is held in the collections of the RISD Museum (RI), Spencer Museum of Art (KS), and the Hawai‘i State Art Museum (HI), among others. She has exhibited in more than 25 solo exhibitions and over 200 group exhibitions nationally and internationally. Nam is a professor of printmaking at the University of Kansas.
Yoonmi Nam | Studio Chaekgeori | 2025 | Photopolymer plate etching | Image: 8 x 8.25 in. | Paper: 14.25 x 14.25 in.