Checksy is a pioneering artist whose checkered work emerges from deeply personal and historic fractures—an inheritance of division, connection, and love.

Her grandmother fled North Korea after fifteen years, slipping onto a fishing boat bound for the South. Her great-grandfather was killed in action during the Korean War; her grandfather, too, served under fire, carrying forward a legacy of endurance. These stories of escape, sacrifice, and longing are woven into Checksy’s work, where each checkered line bears the quiet weight of exile and reunion. Raised in part by her grandmother—her closest companion and emotional anchor—Checksy does not merely remember these histories; she renders them, line by line, turning memory into form.

But the war never truly ended. Its trauma rippled through generations—she growing up under the shadow of her grandfather’s violence, and witnessing flashes of that same anger in her home. Raised in poverty, marked by corporal punishment, and caught in a cycle of inherited silence and volatility, Checksy grew up learning to read danger in the smallest gestures.

Her art transforms that legacy. Living in South Korea, a nation still technically at war, she threads memory and pain into her checkered lines, seeking not only expression—but release. Her work becomes a map of emotional survival, a quiet confrontation with generational wounds that were never named, but always felt.

She coined the term "Checkered Expressionism" to describe a visual technique she developed, in which abstract figures and forms emerge from interwoven checkered lines. Working with analog mediums such as acrylic and oil pastel, her compositions evoke layered memory—palimpsestic, imperfect, and deeply human. Through this hybrid process, she traces the intertwined paths of grief, recovery, division, and connection. Her work is not merely visual; it is memorial. Each line, a thread connecting the past to the present, serves as a reminder that division does not erase love—it reshapes it.

Her work has received international recognition, including being available in the Royal Library in Copenhagen as part of HUG 100 Artists to Watch, selected by a jury from MoMA, Christie’s, and Artnet. She has also been awarded a UNV Certificate of Honor and named a Hug Visionary Artist. Her art continues to resonate globally, collected by those drawn to its deeply personal and historical resonance.

Our division. connection. love. All within the checkered lines #