How Artist Soryun Ahn Blends Myths with Imagined Scenes

For the Arts to Hearts Project, we sat down with London-based painter Soryun Ahn to talk about the worlds she builds on canvas—where ancient myths meet imagined scenes and everyday life.

In this conversation, she shares how growing up with Korean folktales shaped her interest in storytelling, why her figures often shift between human, animal, and ghostlike forms, and how moving from Seoul to London changed the way she sees and works. We learn about her process of blending memory with dream, her use of repetition to revisit ideas, and how her wandering figures echo her sense of being between places. It’s a glimpse into how she navigates the space between reality and imagination, and how her paintings invite us to linger there too.

Soryun Ahn is a featured artist in our book, “100 Emerging Artists 2025” You can explore her journey and the stories of other artists by purchasing the book here:

https://shop.artstoheartsproject.com/products/the-creative-process-book

Soryun Ahn (b.1986, South Korea) is a visual artist based in London whose painting practice navigates the emotional, cultural, and psychological landscapes that lie between reality and inner imagination. Ahn holds a Master’s in Painting from the Royal College of Art (RCA), London (2024), as well as an MFA and BFA in Painting from Korea National University of Arts and Hongik University in Seoul. She also participated in an exchange program at Braunschweig University of Art (HBK) in Germany, an experience that broadened her understanding of visual language across cultural contexts. Ahn’s work is shaped by a life lived between countries, cultures, and emotional states.

Her transnational background has fostered a sensitivity to the nuances of belonging, alienation, and identity—questions that lie at the heart of her practice. Through painting, she constructs new mythologies that blend personal memory with symbolic and spiritual imagery. Her visual language is dreamlike yet grounded, often populated by figures that resist categorisation: feminine, beastly, angelic, ghostlike. These beings are less characters than emotional vessels—manifestations of longing, transformation, and psychological ambiguity. Ahn approaches painting as a site where stories are not told linearly, but unfold slowly through layered brushwork, temporal dissonance, and symbolic suggestion.

She employs both oil paint and charcoal, allowing the contrast between permanence and ephemerality to echo the dualities within her themes. Her figures often appear in landscapes that are neither entirely real nor imaginary, suspended in transitional moments—wandering, gazing, or howling—gestures that suggest existential searching or unspoken emotion. Her recent series, The Melancholy of the Beast, centres on an ambiguous hybrid creature—part human, part animal, possibly saint-like in its gaze—which serves as a metaphor for the paradoxical human condition: caught between the material and the metaphysical, the seen and the felt.

Throughout her broader body of work, Ahn explores how contemporary existence is haunted by inherited myths, internal fictions, and emotional truths. These elements are not depicted as separate but rather as deeply entangled—revealing the surreal texture of modern life. Ahn’s work has been exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions in South Korea, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Her practice ultimately seeks to create a contemplative visual experience—inviting viewers to step into unfamiliar spaces that mirror their own emotional and existential inquiries.

1.    You describe your work as grounded in inner fiction and ancient narratives—where does that pull toward mythology come from? 

My interest in mythology stems from an early fascination with stories that transcend time, culture, and logic—stories that are not bound by fact but hold emotional and symbolic truth. Growing up in South Korea, I was surrounded by traditional folktales and spiritual beliefs that existed alongside modern life. These narratives, though ancient, felt strangely intimate, almost as if they were part of my subconscious. As I began developing my artistic voice, I realised that these mythological structures—filled with ambiguous beings, moral paradoxes, and unexplained events—offered a language that resonated with the emotional complexities I wanted to express.

At the same time, my own experiences of moving between cultures and living in different countries added another layer. I often felt suspended between places, languages, and identities, and I found myself drawn to myths because they speak to that in-betweenness. Mythology isn’t fixed; it evolves, travels, and transforms depending on who tells it and when. In my work, I reimagine these mythic forms through a personal lens—not to recreate specific tales, but to explore internal landscapes, emotional truths, and the blurry boundaries between self and other, reality and dream. Myth, for me, is not an escape from reality, but a way to reinterpret it.

2.      Your figures often appear in states of transformation—half-human, half-animal, or ghostlike—what draws you to these shifting forms?  

I’m drawn to shifting, hybrid forms because they express the ambiguity and instability that I often feel in the human experience. These half-human, half-animal, or ghostlike figures resist fixed identity—they exist in-between, in a constant state of becoming. That in-betweenness reflects how I see the self: not as something stable or singular, but as something shaped by movement, memory, and transformation. Rather than portraying specific characters, I use these forms as emotional and symbolic vessels.

They allow me to explore complex internal states—feelings of estrangement, longing, vulnerability, or resistance—that can’t easily be represented through clearly defined figures. Their ambiguity gives them a kind of openness, allowing them to exist across boundaries: between reality and dream, past and present, human and non-human. These shifting beings also mirror how I navigate the world—constantly aware of multiple perspectives, layered identities, and the feeling of standing at the edge of different emotional or cultural territories. In that sense, they are deeply personal, even if they appear fantastical. They speak to the fragmented, transitional, and often contradictory nature of being—and offer a way to hold all of that complexity at once visually.

3.  How do you approach the tension between reality and fantasy when starting a new painting?

When I begin a new painting, the process often starts with a specific memory—something rooted in real experience—but that memory is not reproduced as it was. Instead, it passes through an internal filter shaped by dreams, subconscious associations, and emotional distortion. What emerges on the canvas is not a direct depiction of reality, but a transformed version of it—refracted through the lens of inner imagination. I’m interested in the moment where external reality and internal vision collide. A fleeting image from daily life, a remembered gesture, or even a seemingly ordinary place can become a point of departure.

But as I engage with that memory, it becomes altered—merged with elements from my dreams or my subconscious. Through this filtering process, the painting begins to form its logic, where the boundaries between what was real and what was imagined are no longer clear. This intersection—where remembered experience meets inner fiction—is where my paintings are born. It is a space of ambiguity, where figures and landscapes take shape not as representations, but as emotional and symbolic constructs. These images often resist clear definition because they carry the traces of both reality and fantasy. In this way, painting becomes not just a means of expression, but a way of reinterpreting reality through personal mythology—reconstructing the world through memory, distortion, and dream.

The figures in my work are not just imagined beings, but emotional mirrors—echoes of the questions I carry with me about identity, home, and the continuous movement between worlds.

Soryun Ahn

4.    What role does repetition play in your work, both in process and in the stories you build?  

Repetition plays a subtle but powerful role in both the making of my work and the stories that unfold within it. In the process, it appears through physical gestures—repeated brushstrokes, layered surfaces, and the act of revisiting the same forms over time. This repetition is not mechanical, but intuitive and reflective. It allows me to revisit certain emotional states, memories, or unresolved questions, which shift slightly with each encounter. In the narratives within my paintings, repetition takes on a symbolic and structural function. The same symbolic elements—figures, animals, gestures, or emotional atmospheres—often reappear, but in altered forms.

These recurring motifs do not repeat identically; they transform, reconfigure, and sometimes even contradict their previous appearances. This process mirrors the way oral folktales are passed down—changing slightly with each retelling depending on the voice, time, or place. Similarly, just as history seems to repeat itself in cycles, the stories in my paintings emerge again and again, each time reborn with new meaning through a different visual context. For me, repetition is a way of engaging with memory and myth not as fixed entities, but as evolving forms. It allows specific images or themes to deepen and expand rather than resolve. Through repetition, I explore how meaning is not singular, but layered—how the act of returning, like echo or ritual, can give birth to something entirely new.

Mythology isn’t fixed; it evolves, travels, and transforms depending on who tells it and when.

Soryun Ahn

5.  You’ve painted across very different cultural landscapes—Seoul and now London—has that shift changed your way of seeing or making?

Yes, the shift from Seoul to London has had a significant impact on both my perspective and how I approach my work. One of the most noticeable changes has been in the landscapes that appear in my paintings. When I first arrived in the UK, I was strongly influenced by the surrounding environment—the grey light, the overcast skies, the unfamiliar architecture, and the slower, quieter rhythm of daily life. These elements gradually began to surface in my work, not as literal depictions, but as atmospheric and symbolic spaces that reflected my sense of displacement and curiosity.

This cultural and environmental shift also made me question my own identity more deeply. Living between languages, between familiar and unfamiliar customs, I often found myself existing in an in-between space—not entirely rooted in one place or the other. This sense of suspension, of being in transition, has naturally filtered into my paintings. I’ve noticed that many of the figures I depict—whether half-human, ghostlike, or wandering through ambiguous landscapes—embody this very state of in-betweenness.

They are searching, hovering, or transforming, often caught between opposing forces or undefined states. I believe these hybrid, boundary-dwelling figures are a direct reflection of my own experience. The move from Seoul to London didn’t just change my surroundings—it shifted how I understand myself about place, culture, and belonging. Painting became a way to process and translate that experience. In this way, the figures in my work are not just imagined beings, but emotional mirrors—echoes of the questions I carry with me about identity, home, and the continuous movement between worlds.

6.   The figures in your paintings often seem to linger or wander—do you see them as versions of yourself, or something else entirely?  

Yes, I do see the figures in my paintings as reflections of myself—though not in a literal sense. They are not self-portraits, but rather emotional and psychological extensions of how I perceive and experience the world. Their states of lingering, wandering, or floating in undefined spaces often mirror my sense of existing between clarity and uncertainty, between presence and absence. These beings embody the condition of being in-between—never fully anchored, always in motion.

Through them, I express the feeling of searching without expecting resolution, and the quiet tension of trying to define oneself in a world that is constantly shifting. At the same time, these figures also reflect a deeper philosophical stance: the understanding that the world is ultimately an unknowable Other—something we can never fully grasp or possess. And yet, despite this, there is still the impulse to observe, to approach, to ask questions. The figures in my work often gaze outward, hesitate, or drift—not in resignation, but as a form of persistent inquiry. I think this mirrors my way of engaging with the world: accepting its unknowability, while remaining present, attentive, and open to its complexities. My painting becomes an act of quiet resistance against certainty, and a gesture of empathy toward what cannot be fully known.

Soryun Ahn’s paintings open a space where the past and present, real and imagined, meet. Her work brings together myth-inspired figures, shifting forms, and landscapes that feel both familiar and strange. Through her journey from Seoul to London, we’ve seen how she uses painting to explore belonging, change, and the in-between moments of life.

From reimagining old stories to creating beings that seem to hover between worlds, her art invites us to slow down and consider what exists just beyond what we see.

To learn more about Soryun, click the following links to visit her profile.

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