SoHyun Bae

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.”[4] 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.

Her father’s protest against censorship by Park Chung-hee’s dictatorial regime[6] was the reason why her family came to the United States.

[4] 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.

[5] 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.