DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (CNN) — When Tae-yeon started drawing on her skin, people in South Korea saw her as a mythical “dokkebi” creature, a kind of “Korean troll” in popular culture. , she said..

Meanwhile, a popular photo showing her face painted on her nails and topped with black hair was described by people online as “hairy nail polish”. In her interview with CNN, Yoon commented on the image: “When I drew it, it was beautiful, but a lot of people thought it was scary.”

With her bright pink hair and T-shirt emblazoned with a surreal print of body parts, Yoon would certainly turn heads in her native Seoul, but in New York City, no one bats an eye, and she likes it that way.

The 30-year-old said his photographs have made a huge impact in Europe and America. In 2016, he added, people didn't start paying attention to him in his homeland until his work was widely appreciated abroad. “What they appreciate is that I get attention from the American press,” Yoon pointed out, adding that this applies to many Korean artists “if interest comes from abroad.”

Yoon's realistic and astonishing optical illusions brought her into the orbit of musicians such as Halsey and James Blake, with whom she collaborated, and she was invited to appear on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.”

Since then, she's worked on ads for Estée Lauder, BMW, Apple and Adidas, and graced the pages of Vogue and Harper's Bazaar with a body-art style that leaves people scratching their heads. “Where does this drawing end”, they asked.

Yoon said she does not manipulate her photos in post-production. She makes it work using glasses, a camera and body paint. Each sketch you draw takes 3 to 12 hours to complete. This lengthy process is one of the reasons why he stopped using models in his work because he didn't want to take up too much of someone else's time.

Fascinating wrecks

Many have called Leon his work stunning and sometimes disturbing, and some have described his facial features as Mr. At the same time as the potato head is considered to be decomposed and reorganized should be woven and peeling.

Yoon explained that it was not his goal to make the audience anxious, insisting that he does not like dark works and wants to add a sense of humor. But because her face is often the canvas for her art, sometimes people attribute more meaning to the finished drawing than she intended in her art.

Most of the time, Yoon looks happy and reveals her inner world. She started painting self-portraits as an emotional expression of what she was feeling. Earlier this year, she felt more intense and sensitive, which was reflected in a cubist-style painting that showed her face distorted by the perspective of triangles. Draw self-portraits.

In another painting, “Let It Flow,” ripples and swirls of brushes hug the curves of Yoon's face and neck, while her “Miss Universe” look, save for her bright red lips and pink hair, is completely obscured by fingers.

He commented on the last painting: “It's kind of ironic and contradictory. It's beautiful to me.”

In her painting “What I'm Made Of,” Yoon painted her entire face with emojis, smiley faces, light bulbs, hearts, and other expressions that reflect her identity. She was only vaguely recognizable because the emojis obscured her features, but instead of hiding her identity, Yoon said the emojis captured what she felt and communicated during her year in America.

On this subject, Yoon pointed out that since moving to America, she realized that she used a lot of emojis because it was easier for her than speaking English. “It's like a smiling emoji, emoji, emoji,” she said, miming text messages, adding: “In the past I've tried to explain with words and sentences, but now everything shows a little emoji.”

This exploration of being a foreigner in a new world is part of a new creative direction that takes her away from processing the strong feelings of sadness she had as a young woman in South Korea. “I've become a much more stable and strong person,” Yoon said of her move to New York.

She added: “I always have a secret diary that I write in when I'm really sad or sick. I write once a week, and the last time I wrote was two months ago.”