Biography

Eury Kim was born in Gwangju, Korea and subsequently spent her childhood moving through various rural and urban landscapes, including Ames, Iowa; Hershey, Pennsylvania; Seoul, Korea; and Rockville, Maryland in the suburbs of Washington D.C. She spent her adulthood in large metropolitan cities migrating between Providence, Rhode Island; Seoul, Korea; and New York City. Eury trained as a graphic designer after varied interests spanning contemporary art, the internet as an evolving digital space, everyday objects as artifact, and installation in its many forms first led her to New York City in 2012. Eury has since worked with small teams at graphic design studios. She was previously Digital Lead at Why Not Smile and continues to collaborate with the Creative Director. 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.

After spending two years in South Dakota, Eury is currently in Gainesville, Florida. She has grown curious about the markers of boundaries made by space and time – trying to make sense of her own migratory path and the experience of having had to relocate so often. Eury’s approach to art and design thus mirrors the perspective of Mono-ha artists who were attentive to what happens between things over long spans in nature. She continues to see through this lens and practices graphic design by programming for flexible spaces that encourage contemplation. Eury currently runs Oneroom with her partner. Oneroom is a library, a classroom, a studio, a theatre, a library, a kitchen, and a living room – it is an art space and a meeting place for sharing ideas and group installations.

Before joining the University of Florida, Eury was Assistant Professor of Practice at South Dakota State University and Adjunct Assistant Professor at St.John’s University in New York. Eury has also taught at the Rhode Island School of Design where she developed curriculum on visualizing conceptual art and 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 – unearthing unseen struggles for ownership over territories and evidence of histories hidden in plain sight. Eury’s current studies are twofold; the first is learning from mother nature by observing and recording how she navigates the expansion of metropolises into megalopolises. The second part is working, with others, to build a collective tolerance against human-made challenges such as bias, force, and social crises.

In response to her findings, Eury has become an advocate for helping to grow diverse literacies. She foregrounds reading as fundamental to establishing solidarity and emphasizes that the act of reading books – in and of itself – is significant to the understanding of complex contexts and shifting paradigms. In Rhode Island, Eury worked with the Providence Public Library and held the role of Reading Program Manager. She helped to develop summer reading programs and increase neighborhood engagement with their mobile library. Her long-term goals are to further similar programming initiatives with public libraries and independent bookstores in Gainesville, which she sees as catalysts for advancing ecological and material literacy. Eury envisions communal reading spaces as an essential resource for broadening the mind and spirit, fostering resilience, and sustaining local communities.

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.