Yang-ha

YANG-HA 

Born in 1994, South Korea
Lives and works in Amsterdam, Netherlands

Yang-Ha is a visual artist whose practice explores the uneasy space between collective trauma and personal expression. She received her MFA in Painting (cum laude) from the Frank Mohr Institute, Netherlands (2021) and her BFA in Fine Arts from Ewha Womans University, Seoul (2018). She is currently an artist-in-residence at Billytown in The Hague.

Working primarily in painting, Yang-ha combines cartoon-like imagery with painterly abstraction to address themes of violence, vulnerability, and resistance. Recurring motifs such as clouds, explosions, and teddy bears appear playful at first glance, yet function as unsettling symbols shaped by the circulation of images in contemporary media. Built through thin layers of pastel tones and translucent surfaces, her works reflect how violence is softened, repeated, and visually consumed.

Yang-Ha has twice been a finalist for the Royal Award for Modern Painting (Amsterdam) and has received development grants from the Mondriaan Fonds and the OCI Museum Young Creativities Award. She has presented solo exhibitions at Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop, London (2024), Wooson Gallery in Daegu, the OCI Museum of Art, Seoul (2023), Sahngup Gallery, Seoul (2022), and H47, Leeuwarden (2021). Her work has also exhibited at Art Rotterdam - Prospect 2024, NAP+ Amsterdam, Kiaf SEOUL, This Art Fair, among others. Her works are part of public and private collections, including the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) – Art Bank, Seoul, and the OCI Museum of Art, among others.