After Drawing Women Trapped in Labyrinths for Years, Kyung-Me Painted Herself Free

It’s rare for an artist to spend years honing a craft and perfecting a way of working only to one day pivot 180 degrees. Kyung-Me makes this look both easy and essential. After Kyung-Me first saw the 12th century illustrations for The Tale of Genji, she “became obsessed with drawing, almost overnight,” as she told me when I visited her studio in Ridgewood, Queens. First, she copied drawings from the work—considered the world’s first novel, and written by a woma