The Colours’ Colour at the Harbourfront Centre: Joon Hee Kim and the Ceramics of Becoming
Installation view of Joon Hee Kim, The Colours’ Colour (L-R): Percipi, Wonderous II, Something Divine III at the Harbourfront Centre, 2025
There are moments in art when form becomes voice—when the curve of a vessel, the stroke of colour, or the rhythm of a pattern seems to speak not only of the artist’s hand, but of something deeper: of memory, of resilience, of the luminous multiplicity of being. In The Colours’ Colour at the Harbourfront Centre, ceramic artist Joon Hee Kim invites us into such a space, one where colour sings, not in abstraction, but in direct communion with the human soul.
Originally scheduled as a short-term presentation, the exhibition has been extended twice due to overwhelming public response. It now runs as a full-length exhibition through September 7, 2025, marking a moment of profound resonance for both the artist and her growing community of viewers. Each work within this show feels like both a declaration and an offering—a celebration of the human instinct to express, to reveal, and to belong.
Installation view of Joon Hee Kim, The Colours’ Colour (L-R): Colourful Existence I, To Discover, To Uncover, To Witness, both glazed ceramic, gold luster, at the Harbourfront Centre, 2025.
Kim’s sculptural language draws from the long-standing metaphor of the vessel as body, but she pushes this relationship further, infusing each form with the textures of memory, language, and ancestral knowledge. Her ceramics not only resemble humanity in its likeness but manages to somehow contain it. Her work communicates a pulse of lived experience, the weight of what is carried and the brightness of what insists on being seen. Colour, for Kim, becomes more than mere ornament; it is the material of selfhood.
The exhibition unfolds as a kind of chromatic revelation. Sweeping patterns and painterly glazes cover her ceramic figures with an intuitive exploration that resists categorization. There is graphic boldness, yes, but also gentleness, an undercurrent of vulnerability that imbues each object with its inner breath. Through this interplay of form and palette, Kim makes visible the many dimensions of what she calls “our colourful vitality,” the inner landscapes we too often suppress or overlook in our daily performance.
Joon Hee Kim, Something Divine III. glazed ceramic, gold luster, Mother of Pearl, 57 x 33 x 30 cm
Yet I found that The Colours’ Colour is not an exhibition about surface; it is about truth. And truth, for Kim, emerges only through the courage to confront what is fragmented, uncertain, or hidden. Her work embraces the brokenness of denial as a passage; she states: “Perhaps noticing that brightness and colour can exist in the dark, could allow us to discover how the colours of our humanity will always remain inseparable from what it means to live truly.” This insistence on complexity, on joy and pain, wholeness and fracture, expression and silence, shapes a practice that is both deeply personal and universal.
Born in South Korea and initially trained as an art director in graphic design, Kim’s shift to ceramics marked not only a change in medium but a reclamation of self. Her practice took root across continents and residencies, from the Banff Clay Revival to Japan’s Shigaraki Cultural Park, Berlin’s Centre for Ceramics, and the Archie Bray Foundation in Montana. Along the way, she has cultivated a vocabulary all her own: one that merges precision and intuition, design and earth, tradition and experimentation.
Joon Hee Kim, Something Divine III, glazed ceramic, gold luster, Mother of Pearl, Detail
This cross-cultural sensibility has garnered international acclaim for Kim. Yet despite her accolades, Kim’s work returns us to something quieter, more essential. Her sculptures hum with the knowledge that identity is not fixed but always unfolding, an infinite expansion, like colour itself. “Formation,” she writes, “is the pursuit of revealing oneself entirely.” This act of unveiling, of standing bare in the shifting light of one’s own becoming, is the heartbeat of her work.
Joon Hee Kim, Adoration & Colourful Existences, both glazed ceramic, gold luster, Mother of Pearl
The Colours’ Colour is a space of intimate resonance, a place where differences bloom rather than divide, where the fragmented becomes whole through recognition. Each vessel, each stroke of pigment, extends an invitation: to see ourselves, to see each other, and to honour the unrepeatable beauty of being alive.
Text and photo: Yehyun Lee
*Exhibition information: Joon Hee Kim, The Colours’ Colour, till September 7, 2025, The Harbourfront Centre, 235 Queens Quay West, Toronto. Gallery hours: Wed & Thurs 12 – 6pm, Fri 12 – 8pm, Sat 10am – 8pm, Sun 10am – 6pm.