Sun Hee Moon

Sun Hee Moon, born in Seoul (South Korea) in 1970, moved to Brazil at the age of two. She grew up in a small suburb of Rio de Janeiro (Niteròi), experiencing the special condition of not only being one of the few Oriental girls in that context, but also that of belonging to a micro-community that is autonomous from developments in the motherland. Indeed, as she recounts, "foreign communities, whether small or large, remain frozen in time, in the same sociocultural habits of the year they left their homeland, while there society evolves, changes and grows." He began at an early age to manifest a passion for art, having the opportunity to visit some local museums-"an immense joy, better than going to the park, the movies or a party"-and to attend, at the age of ten, a drawing class taught by an elderly painter in the town. "For two years I spent all my Saturdays there," he recalls, "drawing all kinds of volumetric shapes with all possible lights and angles, and before I moved on to copying classical drawings and human figures, by the time I was eleven I already knew how to draw in perspective, create depth and correct shading." In the late 1980s she enrolled in the Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning at Mackenzie University in São Paulo, where she had the opportunity to study the history and techniques of art and where she continued her creative journey with more awareness. She graduated in 1995 and stayed in the metropolis for a couple more years. Since then, the artist offers a fascinating figurative painting that is nourished by the most disparate stimuli, coming from her culture of origin and contact with various places in the world, including Italy. She moved there in 1998, settling in Grado, where she still resides and works. "When I moved to Italy," she says, "I realized that I was in the land where the great artists I had admired, loved and studied on the other side of the globe all my life were inspired." A protagonist of group and solo exhibitions since the early 2000s, since 2021 she has been vice-president of ARCOI (Association of Korean Artists in Italy), which promotes, with the support of the Embassy of South Korea, the Korean Cultural Institute in Rome and the Korean Consulate in Milan, the activities of Korean artists present in the Peninsula, ensuring a fruitful dialogue between the two cultures.