Hawan Ryu is a painter, sculptor, and illustrator whose work flows between junk art, etching, and automatism. Since creating Dots & Dots in 2003, she has been drawn to masking tape—a factory-made, rigid material that she transforms into intricate, hand-woven landscapes. Layering dots, lines, grids, and cubes, she builds scenes that echo satellite images of cities and the shifting patterns of human desire. Her work is a visual oral history, a space of refuge where personal memories and collective narratives intertwine.

Born and raised in post-war Korea, Ryu’s artistic practice is deeply influenced by her experience of growing up in a country caught between tradition and modernity, the thrill of rapid development alongside a sense of lingering unease. These tensions find their way into her art, where repetition and structure become a way of processing the past. Through her distinctive use of dots, lines, and grids, she visualises how history leaves its traces, shaping not only landscapes but the people who move through them.

b. 1961, Daegu, South Korea
Lives and works in Seoul, South Korea

• M.A. in Fine Arts at Hongik University Graduate School
• B.A. in Fine Arts at Sookmyng Women’s University

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