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Thread as mark-making device, I make simple hand embroidered drawing. In 2007, the drawing was made on one hundred handkerchiefs and installed on seven Clotheslines in a solo show at the George Billis Gallery New York. Those works were re-installed again in a group show Pricked: Extreme Embroidery, curated by David Revere McFadden at the Museum of Arts & Design, New York for November 2007-April 2008. Collecting embroidered or crocheted vintage household linen had been my ongoing obsession. Past ten years I have recycling them by incorporating with my drawing. My work explores boundary of drawing, adopting common marks from everyday life as drawing mark such as worn holes, mended holes, wrinkles and folded marks and layered doily marks on wet pulp. Holding sharp needles like a pen, thread follows the needle pricks in and out of the fabric leaving the dots. Each dot stays in line and accumulation of lines create form until it gives a meaning. These forms are personal symbols and transfigured image of women from my experience of mother, wife, homemaker and an individual artist. I learned hand embroidery and sewing from my grandmother and great grandmother. They did not know how to read or write like most of the women of her generation in Korea, but knew how to express their impassioned thoughts through embroidery. My work is inspired by their graceful endurance and creativity. Holding my inheritance in one hand and reaching out to contemporary drawing with the other hand, my work continues freeing itself from the boundary of art making, cultivating to find my identity and feminine aesthetics. |