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SURFACE DESIGN JOURNAL - Summer 2014
Ambassadors of the Asian Miracle
Hwajin Oh
and
MiKyoung Lee
b y
W a r r e n
Over the past decade, South Korea has been
on a full-scale economic and social fast track,
driven by a government that is nurturing a
culture seeking global center stage. Among
the most technologically-advanced, digitallyconnected, and fastest-growing economies in
the world, South Korea is being referred to as the
Asian Miracle. Product names like Samsung and
Hyundai are known around the world. Korean
arts and popular culture, including new music,
television, and movies that first spread to parts of
Asia, are now catching on across Latin America,
the Middle East, and beyond. The Chinese have
coined the term hallyu (Korean Wave) to describe
this newfound interest in all things Korean.
Adapting the concept of soft power1 (to
attract and co-opt rather than coerce), the country has increased its global influence through
cultural proliferation. Students encouraged to
study abroad act as ambassadors of good will,
S e e l i g
especially in the US and Europe. International
symposia, biennials, and juried art competitions
provide forums that literally bring the world to
South Korea’s door. One of the most successful
efforts was the 2013 8th International Craft
Bienniale held in Choengju, a colossal gathering
of over 3000 artists from 60 countries.
The work of Hwajin Oh was among the
most original and provocative art shown at
Choengju. Though her formal education in the
arts came from South Korea’s Hongik University,
her fresh, modern aesthetic transcends national
borders with its ability to communicate to an
international audience. Wonderfully idiosyncratic,
Oh’s work seems to emerge out of her subconscious—dream-like and darkly surreal, often with
an erotic edge.
Over the past 15 years, she has
developed work according to three selfdescribed themes: Iconoclasm (2000–2004),
HWAJIN OH GPS Animal (Destiny series) Nylon/wool blend and cotton fabric, hula hoop, hand stitching, 66.9" x 43.3" x 36.2", 2012. Detail LEFT.
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SURFACE DESIGN JOURNAL - Summer 2014
HWAJIN OH Able Man (Destiny series) [front and back] Nylon/wool blend and cotton fabric,
plastic chair, hand stitching, 43.3" x 23.2" x 39.4", 2012. Overhead detail of seat back ABOVE.
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SURFACE DESIGN JOURNAL - Summer 2014
ABOVE: HWAJIN OH My Own Recipe 2 (Desire series)
Paper, computer graphics, gouache, acrylic, 25.6" x 18.9", 2007.
RIGHT: HWAJIN OH The Cross (Desire series) Detail, artificial
leather, beads, spangles, 87" x 88.2" x 19.7", 2008.
Desire (2004–2008), and Destiny (2008–2013). The
Iconoclasm period was an especially rebellious
time for her. Establishing her identity as an
emerging artist, she questioned traditional values
of what she calls the “oppressive state of mind”
that she experienced within a highly regulated
culture. Oh was rethinking the power of money
and the need for social status, questioning customs and values that were part of her cultural
upbringing. She expressed much of this through
large-scale headless figures crouched gargoylelike on pedestals, monstrous busts of tortured
faces, and fearsome sculptures elaborately layered with silver beads and spangles.
Desire was a time when Oh says she was
“full of joy” and open to the possibilities of making art through a variety of media, including
sculpture, painting, and computer graphics. For
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example, in the graphic work My Own Recipe 2, a
horned beast with multiple breasts is tethered to
feeding tubes that nourish the surrounding creatures; her vagina drips liquid into a glass goblet
below. Oh believes that we each possess our own
unique culture just as nations do, and that
“human desire” is the force creating that culture.
The bizarre imagery produced over this period
was often sexualized and anthropomorphic. The
Cross features a pregnant red Madonna hanging
Christ-like from a cross. Made of artificial leather,
this gender-bending, 7-foot-tall figure is highly
decorated in swirling patterns of beads and
spangles. Reflecting on this work, Oh considers
human physical desire and greed to have much
in common with our craving for the spiritual
through religion.
In the Destiny phase, Oh explored her
Surface Design Journal
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SURFACE DESIGN JOURNAL - Summer 2014
MIKYOUNG LEE Untitled Mixed media, paper, burn marks, 9" x 24" x .5", 2008.
belief that much about our lives is controlled by
fate and that our futures are ultimately pre-determined. Choosing to rely fully on instinct, she
allowed “action be an expression of her desire” by
making work without a preconceived plan for
what the completed form might be. For the series
Mating Project, Oh took ordinary used household
objects and intervened upon them with the idea
that they are “destined” for another life different
from their original function. The core of Able Man
is a used plastic chair transformed with a wool
blend fabric and cotton filling. Working improvisationally, Oh stitched, inflated, and grew the
form into an abstract figurative sculpture. “The
motor nerve of hands,” says Oh, “brings a pleasant sensation to the thoughts in the brain, with
the result being a hybrid creation.”2 Many stories
are conjured during this intuitive making process.
The pair of entwined figures in GPS Animal seem
to dance around and through a giant smoke ring.
Wrapping and stitching soft white cotton fabric
over a found hula-hoop, Oh morphs the common
toy into a subtly comical and grotesque nightmare.
The burgeoning economy of South
Korea in the early 1990s provided new opportunities for young people to experience living in a
country that encouraged global outreach. Many
emerging artists participated in this exciting period of cultural transformation by studying abroad.
By 1993, MiKyoung Lee had completed an
undergraduate degree in textiles at Dong-A
University in Busan. This education was rich in
exposure to traditional materials and processes
but conservative in approach.
Several of Lee’s professors were
renowned for their work in textiles, including
tapestry weaver So Chul Park and mixed-media
artist Kwang Moon Kim. Lee speaks of quilt
maker Kyung Ae Wang as an especially important
mentor who expressed feelings about cloth
through a rich metaphorical language. She was
also attracted to Wang’s radical departure from
more traditional forms of quilting and bojagi.
Like many of her peers, Lee was curious
to experience new ways of thinking and working
outside of Korea. She began to explore her love
of textiles in a new and more personal way at the
University of the Arts in Philadelphia. The fiber
program encouraged students to be inventive,
experimental, and self-directed—thinking and
asserting themselves through materiality. At
Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, Lee’s
work continued to evolve through repetitive
mark making with a variety of pencil, brush, and
handwork techniques. Process was never merely
a means to an end, but rather became an important aspect of content in her work.
Lee discusses her feelings about the act
of making art as an important personal ritual. She
considers the time and labor spent in the physical act of twisting, piercing, dripping, wrapping,
knotting, or knitting as the amalgamation of
mind, body, and soul. Her surfaces grow through
connection, attachment, and accumulation of
related elements. Analogous to the way cellular
accretion occurs in plants and animals, her process explores the potential for a surface to grow
through obsessive repeats. For Lee, this approach
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SURFACE DESIGN JOURNAL - Summer 2014
MiKyoung Lee Untitled Twist ties, wire, paint, 22' x 15' x 6', 2011. Detail RIGHT.
to art making may be thought of as an
extension and manifestation of her own
biology.
The assemblage Untitled (2008) is
in the form of an open book. Lee creates
an array of dark marks with a wood-burning tool, gently and repeatedly burning
down through multiple paper pages. The
surface reads like the dark pores on a skin,
with lighter and finer marks at the center
spine moving “organically” to the outside
edge. Lee is never literal in rendering her
imagery, allowing its meaning to be deciphered by the viewer’s imagination.
The same is true of more recent
work, such as Untitled (2011). Larger than
life, this abstract sculpture features a mildly
grotesque root form pushing against an
immense red bloom. Although inverted,
this towering structure is reminiscent of
Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz’s
1969 sculpture Red Abakan made of thick
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woven sisal rope. Lee’s work creates the
illusion of great mass and substance at a
distance, but up close it reverts to the
ordinary. The dense red stalk reveals
itself as an open network of ubiquitous
twist ties—an extraordinary form rising
from the most ordinary of materials.
Below 2 reinforces Lee’s interest
in what she refers to as “material drawing.” Each linen thread becomes a line
that not only repeats vertically across the
surface, but sinks down, dissolving into a
thin layer of bees wax.
The artistry of Hwajin Oh and
MiKyoung Lee is different in form and
content, but their approach to the act of
making has much in common. Both
acknowledge the importance of making
by hand and the relationship between
body, mind, and spirit. Possibly the best
way of describing this comes from Mary
Jane Jacob’s book The Buddha Mind in
Surface Design Journal
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SURFACE DESIGN JOURNAL - Summer 2014
MiKyoung Lee Below 2 Beeswax, thread, 22" x 90" x 1.5", 2013. Detail LEFT.
Contemporary Art. For an artist, the
physical act of making can be a way of
clearing the mind of demands from the
outside world, allowing a mental state
of “drift” to take hold. This relates to the
Buddhist concept of the “unknowing
mind” that values the intimate, spontaneous, obvious, and original above all
else. Not easily translated, “the true
mind” (also known as wu hsin or “no
mind”) is a state of unselfconsciousness
most valued in the creative process.
Somewhere between the heart and the
mind is a state of concentration out of
which ideas and insights may emerge.3
In the realm of iber, similar to
areas of art, science, and technology,
South Korea is becoming recognized as
a world leader. Both of these artists are
leading innovators in the rapidly evolving field known variously as textiles,
mixed media, and material studies.
1The
term soft power was coined by international relations scholar Joseph S. Nye Jr. in
his book Bound to Lead: the Changing Nature
of American Power (Basic Press, 1990).
2Hwajin Oh, 2013, “Birth of Art—The
Continuity of its Hybrid Process” (lecture
provided by the artist).
3Jacquelynn Baas and Mary Jane Jacob,
Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art (University
of California Press, Berkeley, 2004).
Hwajin Oh, www.ohhwajin.com.
MiKyoung Lee, www.mikyounglee.com.
Lee will be a featured speaker at the Korea
Bojagi Forum in Jeju Island, South Korea
(August 24–28, 2014),
www.koreabojagiforum.com.
—Warren Seelig is an artist, art writer, and
Distinguished Visiting Professor at
University of the Arts in Philadelphia.
www.warrenseelig.com
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