Born and raised in Korea, Kyung-Sup Byun studied painting at the College of Fine Arts, Hongik University in Seoul, where she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1980.

Following her graduation, Byun moved to Arlington, Texas with her husband to support him through his doctorate program in statistics. Despite coming from a wealthy family, she was determined to achieve the American Dream on her own terms and took up a job as a seamstress to provide for her family. Through this work, she discovered the beauty and pain of honest labor, a discovery that would later influence her artistic style.

It wasn't until a decade later that she returned to Korea to pursue her passion for art, enrolling in the Graduate School of Chonnam University in Gwangju to study Fine Arts. Upon graduation, however, her commitment to her family saw her return to the United States once again to ensure her children had the best opportunities for education.

Byun dedicated herself to raising her children for another decade before finally returning to Korea to focus on her art. Her day-to-day work now centers on painting infinite dots, a reflection of her experience as a seamstress and her love of stitches. Despite spending many years away from art, Byun never gave up on her passion for creativity, and her commitment to her art has never wavered.

Today, Byun resides in Gwangju, Korea with her husband, who is now a retired professor. She continues to create art that explores the beauty and complexity of the human experience.

“During our youth, we often set our goal while deciding what will be the direction for our lives. This is the same for Byun. From early on, she planned to ‘become’ a painter in setting her life’s direction. As far as I know, painting has always been synonymous with life for her, where one is a supporter for the other, providing the meaning. When we met again after a good while, however, she becomes not just an artist, but lives her dream of becoming an artist. While all the works of the artist are inherently autobiographical, her paintings for Byun can be said to be a pictorial expression of her diary of personal journey. This does not mean she paints only her own world, though. It is easy to interpret her work based on her sewing experience as the woman painter’s expression of women’s life experience. Forough Farrokhzad (1934-1967) once strongly tried to correct such conventional view of equalizing the gender of the artist with the quality of her product, and said ‘to even voice such a suggestion is unethical’. Likewise, we cannot solely look at Byun’s work from a feminist point of view. Just like Farrokhzad, an Iranian poet and painter, started her work with dressmaking and eventually reached out to the world beyond her personal experience, sewing for Byun is not merely the representation of life experience restricted to women in the traditional framework of gendered division of labor. Her art goes beyond feminism. It is an ode to those who sacrifice their own talents to support another, record the sadness for the talent wasted in the process, and pray earnestly for seeing the recovery. After all, like a phrase from Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891), there is no ‘blameless soul (âme sans défauts),’ whether man or woman, whether Korean or non-Korean. Whilst we are confused by the shades of Big Discourses, and losing the fundamentals to humanity in the tumultuous market, Byun’s works offer meanings to the little moment of everyday life and lay them before us as calmly and meticulously as if she is praying.”

- In-Sung Kim Han (PhD), History of Art, SOAS, University of London