Kiaf SEOUL has named painter Lim Nosik one of two winners of its Kiaf HIGHLIGHTS 2026 award, the fair announced in an interview published on 29 October. Presented at the fair by Arario Gallery, Lim was selected from ten artists in the fair's HIGHLIGHTS programme, which supports artists developing their careers in Korea and abroad.

Lim's paintings begin in a small village in his hometown of Yeoju, where families have cultivated the same land for generations, share surnames and are buried in the same ancestral grounds. Funeral and farming traditions are gradually disappearing there, while migrant workers have become part of everyday life. From this landscape, Lim asks whether what we call tradition, or landscape, is ever truly fixed, or whether it is continually remade through the relationships within a place.

His recent paintings resist settling into a single image: people and landscapes merge within the same fields of colour, and similar figures appear slightly out of alignment. Up close the paintings blur; from a step back they come into focus. Among the works shown at the fair was Zelkova Tree – Landscape 71 (2026), a 200 by 130 centimetre oil on canvas, alongside Wildflower – Landscape 70.

Looking ahead, Lim plans a solo exhibition titled HUG next year, telling stories of two beings who keep their own bodies and boundaries while supporting, relying on and living alongside one another. He hopes the show will explore relationships among family members, neighbours and people who have come from far away to live together, as well as between traditions that are disappearing and cultures that are newly emerging.