Haenyeo Artist, Kyoungah Na

A Western painter and migrant haenyeo, she began diving about four years ago in Taeheung 2-ri, a seaside village in Namwon-eup, Seogwipo on the southern coast of Jeju. Her studies in painting took her from Chugye University for the Arts in Seoul to Chelsea College of Arts in London, and in 2021 she graduated from the 7th class of the Beophwan Haenyeo School. The following year, she joined the Taeheung 2-ri fishing village cooperative as an active diver. In 2023, her first solo exhibition in Jeju, How I Accidentally Became a Haenyeo, earned her the nickname “haenyeo artist.” Much of her work is grounded in photographs and records taken underwater, shifting perspective between the surface and the deep. The Commute series captures haenyeo walking across basalt rocks into the sea with their orange floats, or taewak. The Floating Island series reimagines the taewak as both a safe zone and a small cosmos, while the more recent Na Haenyeo series expands the body and breath of haenyeo into images of cosmic navigation.