Nam Kirim

Nam Kirim is a Berlin based illustrator and visual artist originally from South Korea. She studied Visual Communication in Berlin and Fine Art in Seoul, developing a distinctive narrative approach that blends emotional nuance with formal clarity. Her debut picture book, A Very Light Girl and a Very Heavy Girl, was published internationally and selected for the BRAW Amazing Bookshelf at the 2023 Bologna Children’s Book Fair, earning her global recognition. Nam’s work seeks to visualize layers of emotion, time, and silence elements that cannot be fully captured through language alone. A defining feature of her practice is the use of geometric abstraction and minimal forms. The shapes and symbolic characters in her work are not mere stylistic choices, but expressions of her deep interest in visual language, where form, color, and composition function like grammar. By reducing forms to their essentials, she creates poetic and symbolic images that blend abstraction with emotional resonance. Geometry, in her hands, becomes a liberated structure for deconstructing and reassembling complex realities. These characters and forms operate as visual poetry, generating meaning through suggestion rather than direct explanation. Ultimately, Nam Kirim’s work becomes a site of visual inquiry—where minimal units of shape and color open up infinite possibilities for interpretation and imagination.