Korean artist Mi-Kyung Choi, who goes by the moniker “Ensee,” creates digital paintings that blend pastel hues and the delicate touch usually accomplished with traditional materials. Her illustrations, often depicting obscured faces or longing, youthful subjects, adorn books, publications, and other products.
Other motifs that are represented throughout the artist’s work include birds and other wildlife, plant-life, and other fragile, graceful items rooted in the natural world. Most of the subjects seem to be female, framed by both the artist’s intentional suppression of the figures’ faces and a self-imposes exile from the viewer. The obscuring objects can also be prickly, like cacti, or lighter growths that convey shyness.
These works, seemingly commenting on femininity in societal reflections, move between both celebration, stoicism, and more alarming explorations of expectation.