GaYoon Shana Han
BIOGRAPHY
I am a visual artist from South Korea, currently based in Berlin, Germany. My practice explores impermanence in human experience, with particular attention to emotion, memory, and the fleeting moments through which we encounter the world.
ARTISTIC PRACTICE
My work explores impermanence not as a source of loss or despair, but as the very ground of hope.
Inspired by insights found across spiritual and philosophical traditions, I see change as an inherent movement of existence. Nothing remains exactly as it is. Circumstances shift, perceptions evolve, and what seems fixed can take another form.
Inspired by landscapes, I explore moments of connection with the natural world and the ways experience transforms as it passes. Personal photographs and reconstructed images become points of departure for paintings that move between landscape and abstraction. Water, light, atmosphere, and movement shape a visual language attentive to transformation, fragmentation, and dissolution.
My practice explores impermanence, ephemeral moments, memory, light and the unseen. Drawing from Symbolism and impressionism, I transform fleeting senstaions into poetic visual experiences. Informed by Anicca, the Buddhist concept of impermanence, and Hevel, a biblical notion associated with transience and ephemerality. These ideas intersect with my interest in how memory reshapes lived experience, fragmenting, idealizing, and continually reconstructing what once felt immediate. My work also considers the unseen connections between psychological experience and the wider rhythms of the universe.
Rather than depicting specific places, my paintings trace the shifting boundary between presence and absence, exploring how fleeting experiences continue to resonate after they have passed.
“What remains when every experience is already vanishing?”
BACKGROUND
For more than seventeen years, I worked as a handbag designer while developing an independent art practice through exhibitions beginning in 2017. During the pandemic, my attention gradually shifted from the creation of objects to the fleeting moments of quiet happiness found in ordinary life.
In 2022, after signing with a gallery in South Korea and presenting a series of exhibitions, I decided to leave the design industry. Since 2023, I have devoted myself fully to my artistic practice.
Solo exhibition
- 2023.06.23~07.29 'The moment - Eternal recurrenc' (Memory Factory 1945, Sunchoen)
- 2023.06.23~07.29 'The moment - Eternal recurrenc' (Memory Factory 1945, Sunchoen)
- 2021.11.01 ~ 12.31 ‘Ordinary day Special Moment II’ (Metaverse)
- 2021.06.30 ~ 07.04 ‘Ordinary day Special Moment I’ (Dvision World)
- 2020.10.08 ~ 10.17 ‘Ordinary day Special Moment I’ (Gallery4walls, Seoul)
- 2018.10.16 ~ 10.24 ‘How are you feeling today? 5mood 5hyang’ (Gallery4walls, Seoul)
- 2017. 11. 21 ~ 11. 25 'The Sky reflected in the bag' (Gallery Artwa, Seoul)
Group exhibition
- 2026 Berlin Underground (Berlin, Germany)
- 2025 GwangHwamun International Art Festival (Seoul, Korea)
- 2025 The 18th Seoul international Art competition, Selected artist group show (Seoul, Korea)
- 2024 Exposure 2024, Ceres Gallery Chelsea (New York, U.S.A)
- 2024 The 17th Seoul international Art competition, Selected artist group show (Seoul, Korea)
- 2023 the 57th Korea Artist association exhibition (Seoul)
- 2023 ASYAF art fair, selected as Hidden artist (Seou)
- 2022 Gallery K selected emerging Artist (Seoul)
- 2022 Creative Community Club NFT art exhibition (Seoul)
- 2017 'ANDY WARHOL, DA NEW YORK ALLE STELLINE. LEONARDO DI WARHOL
/ WARHOL DI AMENDOLA’ (Millano, Italy)
- 2016 Seoul Hanbok upcycling special exhibition (Seoul, Korea)
- 2013 Fashion & Art 3 special exhibitions (Yong-in, Korea)
- 2011 Emerging Korean fashion designers in NY (New York, U.S.A)
DESIGNER CAREER
- Creative Director of “De shana” total fashion accessories brand.
- Creative Director of “SHANA 8th avenue” leather bag brand.
- Coach Inc Handbag & SLG Technical Designer & Engineer
- Liz Claiborne Associate Handbag Designer
- Carlos Falchi Handbag Designer
- Descente (Le Coq Golf) Golf Apparel & accessories Designer
- FnC KOLON (Timberland) Apparel Designer
AWARD
- 2026 GIAF Asia contemporary artist competition Grand prize winner
- 2025 GIAF Asia contemporary artist competition selected artist
- 2025 The 18th Seoul international Art competition, Selected Artist
- 2024 The 17th Seoul international Art competition, Selected Artist
- 2023 ASYAAF, Selected Hidden Artist
- 2017 NEXTGEN Designer On-line awards - Accessories Winner
- 2016 Korea Great Patent Design 2nd Place
- 2003 The 2nd Samsung Digital Home Electronics Idea Competition
EDUCATION
- Yonsei University Seoul, South Korea
Bachelor of Science/ Life Ecology Design major
- Fashion Institute of Technology New York, NY
Associate Degree of Applied Sciences / Fashion Design Major