bonae yi
MFA FINE ART
Glasgow School of Art
Specialisms: Fine Art / Painting /
Location: Seoul, South Korea
bonae yi
First Name: bonae
Last Name: yi
Specialisms: Fine Art / Painting
Sectors:
My Location: Seoul, South Korea
University / College: Glasgow School of Art
Course / Program Title: MFA FINE ART
About
Bonae Yi is a Korean artist based between Glasgow, UK, and Yeoju, South Korea. She holds an MFA from The Glasgow School of Art (2026) and an MFA from Hongik University, Seoul (2023). Before developing her artistic practice, she spent 22 years in the electronics industry, including 18 years in TV marketing and product planning. Her practice combines painting and material experimentation to investigate the relationship between digital images, light, perception, and physical material. Working across vinyl, acrylic, textiles, pigment, and mixed media, she explores how qualities associated with screens can be translated into material surfaces and how physical processes introduce touch, residue, change, and time.
My practice began with a question arising from more than two decades of experience in the digital display industry: what happens when the sensory characteristics of the screen — vivid colour, gloss, luminosity, and smoothness — are translated into physical material? I initially explored these qualities through vinyl, drawn to its ability to retain the visual qualities of the screen while existing as a transparent yet solid material. Through cutting, staining, stitching, and accumulation, I introduced texture, irregularity, and traces of touch into images originally designed to appear immediate and seamless. Building on this approach, my practice is expanding to explore how screen-like qualities can coexist with a heightened sense of materiality. I continue to develop transparent, solid surfaces that recall the screen while experimenting with materials and processes that introduce texture, thickness, and the passage of time. Subtle changes in light — scattering, reflection, and transmission — become ways for the work to reveal what an image cannot: touch, residue, change, and time.
Competitions
