Author: Yurim Oh

“I weave and connect traces and tracks of subtle changes into organic forms. The organic forms are made with mass-produced industrial materials, in particular, Monofilament and cable ties. They are non–durable, disposable, trivial, inexpensive and easily consumed materials. But, when I weave and connect them, they are transformed into organic visualizations. I want them to be creating lasting moments, evoking and encapsulating our precious thoughts.” – Sui Park

Sui Park creates 3-dimensional organic forms using industrial materials. The abstract forms of dynamic characteristics resemble transitions and transformations in nature, yet they also capture subtle but continuous changes in our emotions, sentiments, memories, and expectations.

One of the three artists featured in Interlacement: A Group Exhibition at The Korea Society, Park discusses her art and career.

The Korea Society
350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor
New York, NY 10017

About the Artist:

Sui Park is a New York based artist born in Seoul, Korea. She had several solo exhibitions and public art projects including a solo exhibition, Floating Imagery at the Cahoon Museum of American Art, Cotuit, MA in 2021 and Pompom in Georgetown, Washington D.C. in 2019. She participated in over 120 exhibitions, including an exhibition, The 5th Textile Art of Today at Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum in Bratislava, Slovakia, where she received the Excellent Award in September 2018. Park’s artwork has been acquired by numerous places including Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art in Oregon and Saks Fifth Avenue Flagship Store in New York. Numerous mentions of her work and projects were published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Hyperallergic, Artnet, Vice and Colossal as well as other publications. Most recently, Park participated in a public art exhibition, ‘RE:GROWTH’ curated by Karin Bravin at 78TH St. on the Riverside Park in New York City, and she was selected as one of two commissioned artists for the 2021 Site-Responsive Art Biennale at I-Park Foundation, East Haddam, CT and will show her public art installation from September 2021. Park’s education includes MDes in Interior Architecture from Rhode Island School of Design and BFA in Environmental Design from Maryland Institute College of Art. She also has MFA and BFA in Fiber Arts from Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Korea. http://www.suipark.com/

“Cutting up, breaking apart, or melting, are some of the ways I lose my familiarity with an object and see its material qualities. Exposing a hidden rawness, I am able to consider the gap between how I know these objects and what they really are. I hope my sculptures can turn things that are considered passive and inert into new unknowns with unexpected eccentric faces.” – Woomin Kim

Through her textile and sculptural projects, Woomin Kim examines the active materiality of daily objects and urban landscapes. One of the three artists featured in Interlacement: A Group Exhibition at The Korea Society, Kim discusses her art and career.

The Korea Society
350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor
New York, NY 10017

About the Artist:

Woomin Kim is a South Korean artist currently based in Queens, NY. Kim has participated in numerous exhibitions and residencies at the Queens Museum, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston Children’s Museum, Art Omi and MASS MoCA, among others. Kim has received fellowships and awards from the Joan Mitchell Foundation and the Korean Cultural Center, and her works have been featured in The New York Times, Hyperallergic and BOMB Magazine. Kim holds a B.F.A from Seoul National University and received an M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. https://www.woominkim.com/

The thing that really struck me was the grit and resilience of the people — they were in the process of recovering from a devastating war that displaced so many people. But the markets were crowded, people went about their business — things had to get done! They had to survive and thrive! … When I see Korea now and think back to that time, Korea’s success should come as a surprise to no one. – Marie Ann Yoo

The photographs in The Feeling of Han: Portraits of Post-War Korea (1956-1957) by Marie Ann Yoo capture the scenery and people of a specific place and time.

As a young Korean-American woman who grew up in Hawaii, Yoo had a chance to visit Korea for the first time in her life when her mother was offered a job in Seoul. Excited to be going overseas for the first time, she was inspired by what she saw and saved money while working on the U.S. base in Korea to purchase a 35mm Petri camera. Yoo roamed the city and the countryside and took pictures everywhere she went, documenting life among the affluent expatriate social circles at the Bando Hotel, where her mother worked, and the everyday life of commoners. Her arresting images of post-war Korea are a testament to her existence as both an insider and outsider to the society she photographed.

Through the impatient stance of a woman on the streets, the grim expression of a man trudging forward to an unknowable destination, a moment of lift in a child’s gesture, the crowds, the buildings, the mud and metal and shambles, Yoo captured a Korea far from the glittery slick nation of the 21st century. We see the nation it was, and the people’s fierce will to manifest and become what they could only dream.

The Korea Society
350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor
New York, NY 10017

About the Speaker:

Marie Ann Kauang-Hee Yoo was born in 1936 in Honolulu, Hawai’i and raised on the Kunia Camp plantation. A descendant of the first wave of Korean immigrants to the US (1903-1905), her family’s reasons for immigration to the territory of Hawai’i were like other Koreans: to practice Christianity, escape Japan’s colonial rule, and ensure their children’s education.

In 1955 Syngman Rhee, a family friend and the first president of South Korea, offered Yoo’s mother Salome Han the opportunity to be the Public Relations Director of Bando Hotel, which was located in what is now the site of the Lotte Hotel in Myeongdong near City Hall in Seoul. Marie Ann, then a student at the University of Hawaii, and her sister Elizabeth, who had just graduated from high school, joined their mother and moved to Seoul for one year.

After her sojourn to Korea, Marie Ann transferred to the University of Oregon where she majored in East Asian Studies and political science. After relocating to the Bay Area, she married Dr. Tai-June Yoo and raised three daughters, Stephanie, Christine, and Katherine. She traveled the world and lived across the continental United States, returning many times to visit Korea and lived there again, briefly from 1969-70. After decades away from the Islands, she has returned home to retire in Hawai’i.