Skip to Content

Vertigo Jina Lee

이진아  


Author Biography


Solo Exhibitions

  • 2025. 5. 1 ~ 5. 31 “Project Yuri: Window PART 1”, Gallery Meilan, Seoul

  • 2024.10.02-10.08 “Song of Transformation: From Cage to Sky”, Topo House, Seoul

  • 2022.11.28-12.11 “Encounter-Modification”, Gallery Giant's Garden, Jeju

Group Exhibitions

  • 2024.12~2025.2 “A4 Drawing” Exhibition, Gallery Meilan

  • 2024.04.~ 05. JinZine Viewing Exhibition “Sound Viewing”, Space: Illi Gallery, Seoul / Sohyunmun Gallery, Suwon

  • 2024.01.~ 02. “Window 24-34 Drawing Streaming”, Gallery Meilan, Seoul

  • 2023.01. Korean Women Artists Painting Competition (Honorable Mention), Korean Art Museum, Seoul

  • 2021.04. 4th Jeju Ink Painting Association Members Exhibition, Jeju Arts Center

  • 2020.06. Jeju Ink Painting Association Exhibition “Daily Life in June”, Jeju Arts Center

  • 2019.04. Jeju Ink Painting Association Exhibition “Feast of Ink Painting”, Jeju Arts Center

  • 2018.08. Jeju Ink Painting Association Exhibition “Jeju Blooming with Ink”, Jeju Hallado Library Gallery

  • 2014.12. “CommaA” Exhibition, Gallery 72-1, Seoul

Major Awards

  • 2020 Selected in Korea Literati Painting Competition / Special Selection in National Chusa Calligraphy and Literati Painting Competition

  • 2019 Selected in Korea Literati Painting Competition / Special Selection in National Chusa Calligraphy and Literati Painting Competition

Artist Note


Vertigo Jina Lee utilizes various media including ink wash, digital, and non-digital methods, creating imaginative scenes with stories based on sensory perceptual transformations that occur in encounters with the world.

At the moment of facing the world and objects, sensory perceptual transformation unconsciously seeps into my work and themes from within me and my body. The events and moments I have experienced melt into the material for stories, which I then unfold into imaginary scenes that condense these stories. From my first solo exhibition onward, transformation has been my main theme. The trajectory of my life is also a story of transformation. Taking the given premises by the world as myself, obsessing over the desires of the world and others as my own desires, and wriggling free from a stagnant, unidentified life that merely stayed aligned with those premises — this process of seeking “myself” is my transformation. In my work, red shoes symbolize desire and obsession. The intense and beautiful red shoes. My shoes are sometimes also a comfortable safe zone, like familiar shoes that fit snugly to the feet. Before I knew it, the shoes became so precious and enormous that they overwhelmed me, and the diminished self became part of the shoes, dedicating itself within, making even the hard dedication and pilgrimage sweet and comfortable.

One summer day in Jeju, by chance, I encountered a young Jeju hawk flying onto the railing of a high-rise glass window, and at that moment through the glass, I fell in love — love for the bird. The hawk showed me the world beyond my safe zone. That day, the young Jeju hawk revived the great Roc bird (Dapeng) from Zhuangzi’s “Free and Easy Wandering” that I had kept in my heart long ago. The giant fish Kun transforming into the giant bird Peng, soaring far away. The Roc came to me in the form of the young hawk. By encountering the hawk that day, I have been depicting the imaginative being “Tibird,” inspired by the Roc and Jeju hawk, along with shoes, symbolizing human desire and obsession, and the flight toward great freedom and infinite potential for change. Tibird flies in, snatches someone’s red shoes, and swiftly flies away. Like in that scene where vitality and the energy of great freedom bloom into countless flowers in the place where the red shoes disappeared, ultimately “I” disappear and the scene of freedom emerges. This journey to find the place of freedom has continued and will continue.

Existence does not stay in one place or state; it constantly changes, moves, and lives. I express this energy of vitality through brushes and various media using visual metaphors and symbols. Even in these moments of expression, spontaneous transformations occur within me, and I am often confused between expressive intentions and spontaneous or accidental transformations. Struggling to abandon my intentions so they do not suppress fleeting transformations, I have been continuously defeated. Yet with every desperate defeat, I come closer to success.

Following my first solo exhibition in Jeju in 2022, “Encounter-Modification,” this second solo exhibition “The Song of Metamorphosis: From Cage to the Sky” unfolds stories imagined with scenes and symbols after the encounter of the hawk, the great Roc, and the lion cub. In future works, I intend to continue embedding messages of desire and great freedom in the paintings. I hope those who encounter my paintings will be prompted to reflect and experience transformations toward freedom in their own ways.


Social Media