South Korean artist transforms social media photos into masterpieces

For many, Instagram is just a time-consuming scroll through endless images. But for a 28-year-old South Korean artist, the social media platform is a rich source of inspiration that fuels her striking portrait paintings.

Renowned young South Korean artist Moka Lee has turned Instagram’s endless scroll into her main source of inspiration, creating portrait paintings that have sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars, Caliber.Az reports via CNN.

“I can observe countless people with just my phone without meeting them,” Lee said. “I wait to find something unique in the pictures that I come across by chance through the algorithm,” she added.

This week, Lee’s portrait “Surface Tension 07” — featuring a young woman smiling widely in a loose white t-shirt, her bangs falling over her eyes — will be showcased by London gallery Carlos/Ishikawa at the prestigious Art Basel fair in Switzerland. The subject was discovered by Lee on Instagram, and the painting was based on a photo the woman posted.

At 28, Lee draws inspiration from a variety of sources including Google searches and American photographer Nan Goldin, but she finds Instagram especially fascinating for how users carefully curate their online identities.

“It may be a bit dark in some ways, but I think it is a very interesting method for me because I can observe so many people sharing themselves,” she explained. “People use the very few pictures that they have on Instagram to express themselves.”

When a photo catches her eye, Lee reaches out directly via DM to ask permission to buy the rights to the image.

Jason Haam, owner of the Seoul gallery representing Lee, sees her approach as a reflection of changing human interaction. “Mona Lisa would have been painted with a person sitting in front of the artist all the time,” he said. Lee, by contrast, “just DMs this person that she never met and says, ‘Oh, I’d like to paint your portrait and I’ll pay you a certain amount of money.’ And they never see each other.”

Lee’s rapid rise includes showing at Art Basel Hong Kong 2023 and selling her painting “I’m Not Like Me” for over \$200,000 in late 2024 — a record for a South Korean artist in their 20s, according to Haam. Named to Artsy’s 2025 Vanguard list, she says gaining recognition has made it easier to collaborate with Instagram users.

Working with oil paints using what she calls “Asian techniques,” Lee spends about a month on large portraits, layering thin washes of paint to create a mysterious depth. “I’ve never seen anything like that,” Haam remarked.

“My career is now expanding from South Korea to overseas markets,” Lee said, “But I’m someone who just looks at my phone in a small room in my studio in South Korea, so it doesn’t feel real at all.”

By Naila Huseynova