The Korean Cultural Centre Canada presents <The Self Within Collective>, an exhibition featuring works by CHOI, Sejin and YOON, Sangyoon. Through painting, the exhibition explores how an individual is continuously shaped within collective structures, revealing the complex relationship between personal consciousness and social influence.

Exhibition Details

- Dates: March 12 – June 12, 2026

-  Venue: Korean Cultural Centre Canada (150 Elgin Street, Ottawa, ON)

-  Artists’ Talk: March 12, 2026, 5 PM (ET)

- Opening Reception: March 12, 2026, 6 PM (ET)

<The Self Within Collective> explores how an individual is shaped within a collective through the works of CHOI, Sejin and YOON, Sangyoon. Both artists depict how personal consciousness is deeply intertwined with social influence, though each approaches this theme from a different perspective.

CHOI examines how social conditioning and shared rituals leave traces on the body. In her familiar scenes of a school activity day, anonymous children participate in group activities. While the actions appear playful, they carry subtle traces of discipline, competition, and the pressure to conform. CHOI’s work highlights how repeated gestures and coordinated movements within a collective setting shape individual behaviour and memory, showing that the social body cannot be separated from personal experience.

YOON turns inward to explore the interaction between the psyche and the social world. He utilizes tripartite vertical composition: the submerged unconscious id, the figures at the surface representing the ego, and the figure above embodying the superego, internalized social norms and expectations. He portrays the constant negotiation between inner desire and external control, showing how the self forms at the intersection of personal impulses and collective pressures.

Both artists navigate the tension between the individual and the collective through different approaches. One traces the social influence imprinted on the body, while the other maps the psychological structures shaped. Together, their works show that individual nature is never fixed but continuously formed and reformed at the intersection of memory, emotion, and social influence.

<The Self Within Collective> invites viewers to reflect on how the groups and structures we inhabit shape our actions, memories, and identities, and to consider the interplay between personal consciousness and collective experience.

CHOI, Sejin 최세진

CHOI, Sejin graduated from the Department of Painting at Ewha Womans University in Korea. Her practice centers on painting and drawing. Using children’s perspectives and play, she metaphorically explores patterns that emerge from society’s collective inertia and relational structures imprinted on individuals. She focuses on how norms, gazes, and roles operate within collective cultures, investigating narratives that arise from an individual’s existence, relationships, and roles within each group.

CHOI, Sejin, Unfolding the Parachute, 194x130cm, oil on canvas, 2018

YOON, Sangyoon 윤상윤

YOON, Sangyoon graduated from the Department of Painting at Chugye University for the Arts and completed an MA in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art and Design in the UK. His painting practice observes the sensations of “territory” and “gaps,” and the tensions between the individual and the collective. He has held solo exhibitions in New York and Shanghai, and participated in numerous exhibitions in Korea as well as international projects, including Art Central Hong Kong and exhibitions in Beijing and Suzhou, China.

YOON, Sangyoon, Tea for Two, 162x130cm, oil on canvas, 2023