Image: SoHyun Bae, A Woman of Joseon Dynasty: Colossal Head I, 1998, charcoal, pure pigment on canvas
"Questioning from the Inside: Works by SoHyun Bae", a thematic retrospective of the New York-based American painter, closes on Sunday, 18 October 2026 at the Susquehanna Art Museum in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The exhibition opened on 18 July in the museum's Beverlee and Bill Lehr Gallery.
The museum presents the show as a survey of Bae's career, organised around cultural memory, Korean history, Jewish mysticism and the natural world. Her paintings draw on rice paper, the subdued colours of Korean ceramics and the patterns of bojagi, the patchwork wrapping cloths of Korea. Much of the work responds to Shevirat ha-Kelim, the idea in Jewish mysticism of the world as a shattered vessel. According to the museum, the paintings pay tribute to the fragmented roles, traditions, materials and faces of the artist's ancestors and of Bae herself.
Works on view include two large heads from the series "A Woman of Joseon Dynasty", "Colossal Head I" and "Colossal Head V" (both 1998), "Egg Woman V" (2003) from the series "Wrapped Shards", and "Untitled (Pelvis)" from 2012, made with rice paper and pure pigment on canvas.
Bae studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and Boston University and later earned a Master of Theological Studies at Harvard Divinity School, where she studied with Elie Wiesel, who encouraged her to explore Jewish mysticism. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2007 and has also been supported by the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and residencies including Yaddo and Montalvo. Her work has been shown at venues such as the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, the Peabody Museum at Harvard, the Queens Museum and the Hangaram Museum at the Seoul Arts Center.
She has also worked with the Martha Graham Dance Company, drawing dancers in 3D for Graham + Google in 2018, drawing them live for a studio series in 2019, and contributing to the premiere of "Floes" in 2025.
