When space becomes lines
Miae Ham: Matter as Living Memory
Miae Ham's monumental installation is the centerpiece of the exhibition When Space Becomes Lines, presented at Éclats Art Contemporain, from June 2 to 30, 2026. Suspended vertically in front of natural and artificial light sources, long strips of paper crossed by collages, ropes, fabrics and organic materials transform the space into a sensitive and immersive experience. The light reveals the metamorphoses it over the hours and days.
For several decades, Miae Ham has been developing a practice deeply rooted in the relationship between matter, memory and spirituality. Her artistic career bears witness to a remarkable evolution, visible through different periods. Over the years, there has been a gradual shift from more expressive and colourful works to increasingly refined, meditative and monochrome compositions.
Her earlier productions made extensive use of colour, interior landscapes, flowering, and the tensions between abstraction and figuration. In her recent works, colour seems to retreat to allow for a quieter aesthetic, centred on texture, light and the physical presence of materials. Chalky whites, deep blacks, earthy greys and natural fibres now create an atmosphere close to certain sensibilities of the Korean Dansaekhwa movement, where repetition, materiality and temporality become the very subject of the work.
Paper is central to this transformation. Torn, superimposed, stretched, suspended, it retains the memory of the gesture that went through it. The ropes and fabrics integrated into the surfaces extend this organic and tactile dimension, as if each element bore the traces of a silent history.
This approach is also part of a broader reflection on the dialogue between East and West, a fundamental theme of her artistic approach. Born in Korea and now living in Montreal and Seoul, Miae Ham seeks less to oppose these worlds than to make them coexist. Her work unites Korean material traditions and contemporary abstraction in a search for balance and spirituality.
In When Space Becomes Lines, the vertical stripes evoke suspended writings as much as fragments of architecture or changing landscapes. The light passing through the materials creates variations of transparency and shadow, giving the impression that the work breathes to the rhythm of place and time. Each shift in the viewer’s position transforms the perception of the surfaces, gradually revealing details that remain unseen at first glance: delicate fibers, subtle textures, seams, tears, and traces of pigment absorbed deep within the paper.
The play of light
Light occupies a central and essential place in Miae Ham’s artistic practice. Her installations are designed to react to different forms of lighting, creating changing visual experiences. The reflected light reveals the reliefs, folds, fibers and scars of the paper, accentuating the tactile and sculptural dimension of the surfaces. Conversely, transparent lighting passes through layers of paper, fabrics and collages to reveal an inner depth that is invisible at first glance.
Some areas become translucent, revealing shadows, tensions, and delicate superimpositions that transform the work into a luminous membrane. The reflected light, softer and diffuser, envelops the materials in a silent presence, making the monochrome tones vibrate and revealing the subtle nuances of whites, greys, blacks and organic earths. Depending on the time of day, the intensity of light or the movement of the viewer, the works change their appearance, as if they were breathing with the space around them. This shifting relationship between matter and light reinforces the central idea of Miae Ham's approach: the work is never fixed, but engaged in a living process of transformation.
Matter as an inner transformation
Miae Ham conceives her works as living forms, subject to time, light and the continuous transformation of matter. For her, a work is never finished: it continues its existence long after the initial gesture of creation. The papers change, the fibers relax, certain colors slowly fade, the surfaces sometimes lose their original elasticity. This aging is not accidental; it is not perceived as a degradation. It is an integral part of the work. This vision demonstrates that Miae Ham is inspired by nature to create. Like a living forest, her work will follow its course, integrating itself into the cycle of life.
This vision gives her practice a profoundly spiritual dimension. The material becomes the reflection of a natural cycle of transformation, comparable to the passage of time on the human body or on the landscape. What disappears physically does not really go out: it is transformed.
Transition
The installation unfolds as a meditation on impermanence. Nothing appears to be set in stone. The materials continue their transformation, as if the work remained alive, traversed by the slow forces of erosion, light and energy.
Through this exhibition, Miae Ham offers an experience where the gaze does not dominate the material. Space becomes line, line becomes trace, and trace becomes energy.
Life Energy
Miae Ham’s works resemble a forest in perpetual transformation. Like trees that slowly age, shed their bark, lose their leaves, and regenerate through the passing seasons, her materials evolve over time, colors fade, fibers soften, surfaces lose their original tension. Yet nothing truly disappears. What seems to decay becomes part of a new cycle of presence and renewal. Light moves through the works like wind through branches, revealing hidden textures and silent traces of memory. In this slow metamorphosis, the emotional charge contained within the materials gradually dissolves into something less tangible, becoming atmosphere, vibration, and invisible energy. Much like an ancient forest where death and rebirth coexist continuously, Miae Ham’s installations embody a living state of impermanence, where matter transforms quietly into spiritual presence.
In When Space Becomes Lines, this meditative dimension is fully manifested. The long suspended vertical strips appear as fragile, almost breathing presences. They do not seek to impose a definitive image, but to make perceptible a state of passage, between presence and disappearance, between memory and erasure, between matter and energy.
More than a reflection on material change, Miae Ham’s art invites us to contemplate the fragile and continuous transformation of existence itself.
Claude Gauthier
May 2026
Éclats Art Contemporain
