Shin

Featured Artist: Kyungmi Shin

Artist Statement

My latest series of work, is titled "Father Crosses the Ocean" in a double entendre referencing my father, who was a Protestant minister, and the fathers who crossed the oceans as missionaries. Majority of the visual examples I am sharing with you is from this series. The exhibit investigates the nuanced counter-influences of Asian aesthetics on European art and decorative objects introduced through the porcelain and silk trade and the European reach on the Asia through economic and religious colonization. This topic is a bit grand to take on as a theme for artistic production, but I arrived at this as I reflected on the turbulent historical periods that my father lived through. I realized that the many forces of world politics intersected with and influenced his life profoundly, and that our private lives, choices we make, and the journeys we take are intricately intertwined with the larger arcs of history.

My latest photo-based wall works began with photographs of my father. What used to be casual snapshot of the past, now with my father's advancing Alzheimers, seemed to possess more potency and iconic power. I am layering these family photographs with Chinoiserie paintings, details from royal carriages, and images from medieval manuscript illuminations. In some, I paint on top of the photograph, to create a transparent fixation of the photographs as a graphic element. In others, I cut the photographs, printed on both sides of the paper, to present them as sculptural objects, the cut details revealing the underside creating a narrative about duality and the connectedness.

The porcelain objects are created as multiples of portrait busts of my father and myself and various vessels and body parts and opium poppy flowers. I glaze-imprint narratives from Christian and Buddhist texts on the portraits like tattoos, and the large porcelain tiles are imprinted with Chinese/ European decorative patterns overplayed with these narratives. I am using traditional Chinese techniques in the building of the portrait busts as I worked with artisans in Jingdezhen, China, where the porcelain objects were made and exported to Europe for over a thousand years.

The photo-based wall works, I am layering these family photographs with Chinoiserie paintings, details from royal carriages, and images from medieval manuscript illuminations. In some, I paint on top of the photograph, to create a transparent fixation of the photographs as a graphic element.

Website: www.kyungmishin.com