Son Min-hee explores the relationship between the self and the body through the experience of illness, grounded in her autobiographical experience of migraines and chronic pain that have settled in the body over time. Through this process, she comes to perceive the body as unfamiliar. Prolonged illness renders the body uncontrollable; in this process, the body emerges as both part of the self and an “other” that unsettles social norms.

This sensibility first appears as the “Body of Interiority,” which attends to internal bodily experience. By translating the sensations of a body passing through illness into visual language, she questions fixed concepts of the body. The process of deconstructing and reassembling the body transforms deformations caused by illness and pain into new vital movements. The “body that simply exists” within the work departs from normalized images of the body and becomes a subject that operates on its own.

The body then extends into the “Body of Fluidity,” shifting beyond fixed form and transforming through its relations with others. This unfolds as a process of resonance with others or with non-typical living forms—such as plants and animals—emerging from the condition of a body that is ill, female, and passing through illness. In her work, bodies entangle with these forms, repeatedly combining and separating, and affect one another through such contact. This moves beyond the pain of the isolated individual toward a sense of solidarity formed through relations with others.

Furthermore, driven by the desire to leave the body, the body transitions into the “Body of Transcendence,” migrating into the outer shell of a new life form. Artificial fluorescent colors, exaggerated eyes, and cartoon-like expressions function not to directly reveal pain but as devices that conceal it beneath the surface of the image, rendering visible the nature of illness that does not easily appear outwardly. The combination of painterly materiality and heterogeneous objects blurs the boundaries of the body and enables its transition into another site. Through this, the work moves beyond the body as an absolute place that cannot be left, opening a space for another mode of existence.