Artist Yon Seok-nam Honors Kim Man-deok with Monumental, Minimal Heart of Motherly Love
Creatrip Team
a month ago
Korean feminist artist Yon Seok-nam (b.1939) presents Kim Man-deok (1739–1812) as an archetype of motherly compassion in works like “Kim Man-deok’s Heart Is Tears and Love” (2015) and the 2019 portrait. Kim, a low-born merchant from Jeju who saved her island during a 1795 famine by buying and delivering 500 seom of rice, is shown not through narrative detail but by amplified, simplified forms—an enormous, rounded heart with falling tears that Yon says turned into rice. The artist, who began depicting mothers and resilient Korean women after age 40, uses monumental scale and repetition (e.g., piled rice motifs) to convey universal, boundary‑crossing care: a maternal love that feeds and sustains all lives. Yon’s work reframes historical female figures as sources of strength and tenderness, expressing “mother” as a social and ethical force rather than merely a blood relation.
