Ba He-jum's Paintings Bring Bitcoin and Motherhood Together
Korean painter Ba He-jum recently showcased her solo exhibition 'Awakened' at MASSIMODECARLO in Seoul's Samcheong neighborhood. The show ran from August 29 to September 5 and featured eight new paintings, including 'Milk of a Bitcoiner-Mother', 'There Is an Ocean in the Pregnant Belly', and 'I Envy the Mother Conches'.
According to Ba, her work grew out of everyday subway scenes and her interest in abstraction as something alive and moving. She framed the paintings as open-ended images rather than neat metaphors.
Ba was inspired by a sharp rise in Bitcoin prices on a Seoul subway, where nearly everyone around her was looking at cryptocurrency charts on their phones. This image lingered with her, making abstraction feel less distant from life.
Ba used the fluctuating lines of crypto markets and breastfeeding as materials for painting. In 'Milk of a Bitcoiner-Mother', she imagined a person who both invests in Bitcoin and breastfeeds - a figure who could be herself, but also anyone else. The work draws a visual connection between downward-moving market graphs and milk that flows down the body.
Ba is more interested in holding unlikely conditions together: market volatility and physical vulnerability, digital desire and the labor of care. She believes that once something becomes a painting, it stops, but the ways of reading it remain open.