Kyung Me explores young love in New York through her free-form drawings

Kyung Me’s series of drawings Bad Korean is loosely about being in between stages in life. “Being old enough to know better but young enough to blame your mistakes on naivety, or on your parents,” says the illustrator. “It’s about falling in and out of love – dragging dead feelings along.” 

Similar to her teenage diary, the drawings capture repeating emotions and moments at various tangents of her life and it’s these themes of love, loss, boredom and regret that underlie each drawing. Kyung Me explores universal feelings in this series, yet it started with a very personal dream about being in love. “I fantasised about it all the time. Throughout my late teens and early 20s I sought out this dream like a hungry animal,” explains Kyung Me. “It was really fun for a while but I felt traumatised a lot. Throughout this period I began to document how bad and sad I felt through my drawings.” 

Bad Korean is full of wonderful, free-form lines and shapes. Her characters are irregular but charming, as the tiny, detailed face of her protagonist sits in a larger, more mallowy body. From dates at the movies to passionate embraces, Kyung Me captures many aspects of being, falling and chasing love, but there’s wit and humour emanating from her character’s deadpan expression.


“Creating these drawings gave me a lot of happiness because the point of these drawings was not to make something that looked good. These were some of my first drawings and I never felt self-conscious,” she says. Kyung Me spent two years on the series and this organic way of drawing improved her skills. “In the beginning, the girl’s hands looked like mittens and towards the end they looked like gloves.”

Bad Korean is currently on show at Miller in New York until 16 October. The series is also available in book form, published by Space Face in Vermont. At book signing at Miller will take place Saturday 8 October 2016 (4 – 7pm).