Biography

Eury Kim was born in Gwangju, Korea, and spent her childhood moving through cities of various sizes, ultimately landing in larger metropolitan areas and migrating between Providence, Rhode Island; Seoul, Korea; and New York City. Trained as a graphic designer, Eury’s path was shaped by a wide range of curiosities about the internet and how contemporary art occupies digital spaces, as well as everyday objects and their installation as lived experiences – interests that led her to New York City in 2012. Eury has since worked with various graphic design studios. She was previously Digital Lead at Why Not Smile and continues to collaborate with their team. Eury has also worked with Apartamento Studios in New York and Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where she was responsible for designing Prattfolio – the school’s institutional magazine.

Before joining the University of Florida, Eury served as Assistant Professor of Practice at South Dakota State University and Adjunct Assistant Professor at St. John’s University in New York. She has also taught at the Rhode Island School of Design, where she developed curriculum around implementing democratic methods of making into contemporary design. While Eury teaches visual communication and design processes, her research centers on discovering invisible traces of displacement in hidden histories: she examines how nature adapts to urban expansion in order to find new ways for communities to build resilience towards social challenges.

In essence, Eury advocates for growing diverse literacies in her research. She foregrounds reading as fundamental to establishing solidarity and emphasizes that the act of reading books – in and of itself – is significant to understanding complex contexts and shifting paradigms. In Rhode Island, Eury worked with the Providence Public Library as Reading Program Manager, aiding in the development of summer reading programs and aiming to increase neighborhood engagement through their mobile library. She seeks to foster similar initiatives in Gainesville, viewing communal reading spaces as vital for building resilience and advancing both ecological and material literacy.

Among all the places she has lived, Eury considers the Ocean State an important part of her personal history, having spent large parts of her life in Providence, Rhode Island. She is a graduate of the MFA Graphic Design program at the Rhode Island School of Design, where she also earned a BFA in Industrial Design.

TL;DR

Eury Kim is an Assistant Professor of Visual Communication Design at the University of Florida and co-runs Oneroom, an art space and graphic design practice. Her work fosters learning about the environment by observing how nature adjusts to growing cities. Through this research, she aims to implement reading programs that can help strengthen communities and build a shared resilience. Eury holds an MFA in Graphic Design and a BFA in Industrial Design from the Rhode Island School of Design.