London based, South Korean painter Minyoung Choi primarily creates large scale surrealist pieces where animal habitats and human houses are found merging together. For example, in one piece a human girl works on a desk that has been placed in the middle of a snowy landscape as mountain lions and goats watch. In another, a living room has been flooded to allow a squid to observe the piano. Had the animals been anthropomorphized and not rendered realistically as they are in Choi’s paintings, these scenarios could have easily been found in light-hearted children’s books such as the Peter Rabbit series or Winnie the Pooh & Pals.
Instead, here the realistic way the animals have been rendered asks audiences to think about how these animals really live in their habitats, places that do not resemble human bedrooms and living rooms. Here, audiences are invited to consider how human housing has affected animal habitats. Hence, Choi’s paintings advocate against the further destruction of animal habitats, highlighting how it is akin to forcefully evicting them out of their homes for the sake of building human ones. This is why the surrealism paintings by Minyoung Choi are relevant to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals of Life on Land and Life Below Water.
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) highlights that today, habitat loss poses the greatest threat to species biodiversity worldwide, affecting 85 percent of endangered and threatened species on the IUCN Red List. The main reason for habitat loss has been human activity, which sees everything from forests to swamps and lakes harvested or cleared for housing, agriculture, pipelines and more. This is why it is important for artworks such as Minyoung Choi which helps campaign against more destruction of habitats around the world.
Minyoung Choi’s surrealist paintings blend human spaces with animal habitats to deliver a powerful message about conservation and habitat preservation. By rendering animals with realism within surreal human settings, her work highlights the impact of human activity on wildlife, likening habitat destruction to eviction from their natural homes. Choi’s art serves as both a call to action and a reminder of the shared responsibility to coexist harmoniously with nature.
Find out more about surrealist paintings and other pieces by Minyoung Choi on her website www.minyoungchoi.co.uk or Instagram @minyoung._.choi.