Kim Hyun Jung x Alita: Battle Angel

Even an unfamiliar world can look new when dressed in a familiar sensibility. Different eras and cultures can be closer to each other than we think. This art collaboration with Alita: Battle Angel began with the artist reimagining a futuristic cyborg character through the language of Korean painting. In place of the sleek smoothness of a digital image, she added the forceful brushstrokes of ink wash and hanbok, along with a contemporary, familiar touch — hair curlers on the character’s bangs. On reflection, tradition is not only about preserving the past unchanged. It lives on more vividly when it can meet an entirely different world and be freshly reinterpreted through one’s own sensibility. This work is closer to the process by which Korean painting encounters an unfamiliar image and, in doing so, creates a new face of its own.