SoHyun Bae (born 1967) is an American painter[1] living and working in New York. Her iconography has been described as being shaped by "a history lived from afar, therefore colored by the absence/presence of memory, doubts of otherness, longing, mythologizing and an awareness of archetypal belonging.”[2]
SoHyun Bae received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1990 having spent her senior year abroad in Rome, Italy in the European Honors Program, a Master of Fine Arts from Boston University in 1994, and a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School in 1997.
SoHyun Bae was born in Seoul, Korea to Jongwoo Bae,[2] an Editor/Producer of Donga Broadcasting network and Hyunye Cho, an essayist and an author of children’s books. Her father’s protest against censorship by Park Chung-hee’s dictatorial regime was the reason why her family came to the United States. He was a leading figure in the Donga Ilbo Blank Advertisement Incident (Donga Ilbo Baekji Gwang-go Satae). She was eight years old when her family immigrated to the United States.[2]
Early influences were: Pak Tu-jin, a Korean poet; John Walker, a British painter; Elie Wiesel, a writer and Nobel laureate; and Richard Nieburh, Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard University.
SoHyun Bae moved to New York in 1997 where she met and worked with: Karel Appel, painter and a founding member of the Cobra Movement; and Esteban Vicente, a first generation Abstract Expressionist. In the years she lived abroad in Bologna, Italy (2003 - 2009), she met and befriended Vasco Bendini, a painter and a founding member of Arte Informale.
SoHyun Bae is the recipient of numerous awards including: The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship,[3] in Fine Arts,[4] Art 2007; The New York Foundation for the Arts,[3] Fellowship in the field of Painting, 2002; The Pollock-Krasner Foundation,[5] Inc. Grant, 2000; a Fellowship at Montalvo Art Center,[6] 2019, a Fellowship at The Corporation of Yaddo,[7] 2000; The National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship[8] in conjunction with Virginia Center for Creative Arts,[9] 1996; and a full scholarship[10] to the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture,[11] 1993.
Her works have been exhibited world wide in numerous galleries,[12] auction houses and museums[13] including the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco;[14] Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University;[15] Seoul Arts Center Hangaram Museum;[16] Museo Nacional di Visual Artes, Montevideo;[17] Queens Museum, Sotheby’s[18] NY, and Philips de Pury & Luxembourg.[19]