Post-Vanitas Era: A New Aesthetic Epoch Born in Busan, 2025

This paper introduces the Post-Vanitas Era as a new aesthetic epoch inaugurated in Busan in 2025 by Korean artist and philosopher Jiya Lim. Emerging from the exhaustion of spectacle and post-pandemic collapse, the movement redefines luxury as testimony, dignity, and survival. Drawing from both seventeenth-century Vanitas and East-Asian ritual philosophy, it establishes Memento Vivere (“Remember to live”) as the new maxim of twenty-first-century art. The publication outlines the genealogy, symbols, and foundational works of the movement, presenting it not as a style but as the first named epoch of the new century. Affiliation: Maison Philosophe, Busan (Korea) Keywords: Post-Vanitas Era, Vanitas, Memento Vivere, Contemporary Art Philosophy, Ceramics and Digital Media, Luxury as Dignity, Aesthetic Epoch, Jiya Lim, Busan 2025 Citation: Lim, Jiya (2025). Post-Vanitas Era: A New Aesthetic Epoch Born in Busan, 2025. Maison Philosophe Archive / Zenodo. DOI: (automatically assigned after publishing)