In 1997, after moving to the South Korean countryside from Seoul, artist Lee Me Kyeoung came across a “beautifully dilapidated” old convenience store in her neighbourhood and was compelled to paint it. The two months it took her to complete the drawing, using ink pens, was such a “joyful experience” that she decided to seek out more. “These small, old mom-and-pop stores were more than just places to buy goods, they were essential to the community,” she says, but they were disappearing as shopping habits in Korea changed. Me Kyeoung’s drawings – she has committed about 500 stores to paper over 26 years, along with cherry blossoms and other trees that flourished over many of them – are a record of a slower, more community-centred way of life that is passing into memory.
