I grew up in South Bay, California, where I went by the name Ashley.

But recently moved back to Korea -naively expecting something like closure, thinking it might feel like coming home. It didn't.

Living here has been even more complicated than being an immigrant in the U.S.

I’ve always known I’d be an artist. I studied at Otis College of Art and Design because the path felt natural.

But no one warns you how easily your gift can be repurposed—turned into decoration, currency, performance.

The more I created for external validation, the more estranged I became from the part of me that made art in the first place.

Eventually, I stopped. Not out of rebellion, but fatigue.

And when I left LA, it wasn’t to chase inspiration. It was because I didn’t feel anything anymore.

I landed in Korea hoping for clarity—or at least a contrast.

Instead, I collided with a culture where productivity is equated with worth.

Where the pressure to fit a mold is so constant, you don’t notice how much you’ve shrunk.

I tried to adapt. I became efficient. Acceptable.

And in doing so, I violated every boundary I had with myself.

When I couldn’t breathe anymore, I fled again. To Granada, Spain.

A beautiful city where I once again became a stranger—even to myself.

The backdrop changed, but the internal script stayed the same: insecurity, regret, economic precarity.

Eventually, I returned to Korea. Not because I had answers—but because I was tired of running from the questions.

In that stillness, I started grieving. Not for a person, but for a version of myself I had abandoned.

I had stripped my identity down to survival and forgotten how to feel safe in softness.

The grief wasn’t poetic—it was flat. Days passed in silence.

Until one day, I drew a version of myself sprawled on the floor, eating Hot Cheetos, aimlessly flipping through Netflix with my toes.

It was absurd. And honest. And oddly tender.

So I kept drawing—these soft, sedentary women doing nothing exceptional.

Lying around. Letting themselves exist without performance.

And I gave them details I used to hide: cellulite, wrinkles, stretch marks, tummy rolls.

The parts I was taught to erase.

But something happened when I saw them on the page: they became familiar. Beautiful, even.

That was the shift.

Drawing became less about expressing myself and more about remembering myself.

I didn’t need to be impressive. I needed to feel real.

The more I leaned into stillness, the more alive I became.

My work now explores rest as resistance.

It questions the pace we’re expected to maintain and the performance of being “fine.”

It challenges the idea that healing has to look productive, or that self-worth must be earned through exhaustion.

I draw women who are radically soft, defiantly idle, and wholly unedited.

Because sometimes, progress looks like stillness.

Sometimes, transformation begins the moment you stop moving.