Korean contemporary art is not a trend. It is the product of a specific and irreducible national experience — Han, Gwangju, the DMZ, the speed of modernisation — that is now being recognised by the world's most important institutions at exactly the moment the global art market is hungry for it. Yim Tae Kyu has been painting the Marginal Man on hanji paper with Indian ink and cartoon precision for years. Mire Lee just filled the Tate Modern Turbine Hall. The world caught up last. The artists were already there.

Defiance is elemental. That is the first thing Priscilla Franco Asturias says about Sorelina, the jewelry studio she founded with her sister Andrea in Los Angeles in 2011. A reaction between heat and pressure which creates something new and beautiful. Lava meets diamonds. Raw wood meets rubies. The result is jewelry that feels like it was made by the earth itself and then finished by a very careful hand.