London and Seoul-based Korean artist Meekyoung Shin (b.1967) is
internationally renowned for her sculptures that probe the mis- and
re-translations that often emerge when objects of distinct cultural
and historical specificity are dislocated from their original
context. Made from soap, her works replicate artefacts and
canonical works of art, from Asian porcelain vases to Greek and
Roman sculptures, translating between continents, cultures and
centuries in the process. Meekyoung Shin was born in South Korea
and completed her BFA and MFA at Seoul National University. In
1995, she moved to London to obtain her MFA at the Slade School of
Art, University College London, and has since held solo exhibitions
internationally including at Haunch of Venison, London (2010) and
the Korean Cultural Centre UK, London (2013). She has participated
in numerous group shows including at the Museum of Art and Design,
New York, and the 2013 Asian Art Biennial in Taiwan. Her works are
found in collections all over the world, including the Museum of
Fine Arts in Houston and the National Museum of Modern and
Contemporary Art, Korea. Shin was nominated for the Korea Artist
Prize 2013. In this new monograph on the artist, Jonathan Watkins
sets the scene for Shin's solo exhibition at the Korean Cultural
Centre UK in London in late autumn 2013, a stone's throw from
Nelson's Column and the'Fourth Plinth' commission of Trafalgar
Square. Context is essential to Shin's practice, and indeed, to her
identity. As she asserts: 'I often identify myself as someone on
the border between cultures'. Watkins eloquently introduces Shin's
major bodies of work whilst capturing the cultural complexity,
exquisite craftsmanship, conceptual elegance and natural wit
embodied within them. An essay by Ben Tufnell explores the cultural
and historical references in Shin's work over the past fifteen
years. Taking Shin's solo exhibition at Haunch of Venison in London
in 2011 as his point of departure, he opens up questions of
anthropology and museology, of what is exhibited where and when, by
and for whom. His incisive analysis of Crouching Aphrodite (2002)-
a life-size sculpture of the artist's own body in the pose of the
classical Venus of Vienne from the Louvre - raises issues of
Eastern and Western culture, of originality and copying: 'Being
neither fully Asian nor fully Roman it inhabits a cultural limbo
space.' Tufnell explains, 'Shin's works are not simply replicas or
reproductions but strange twins, uncanny avatars of their
precursors.' Curator and art historian Kyung An's text offers an
illuminating account of Shin's Written in Soap: A Plinth Project
(2012-ongoing), which takes the form of a remarkable public art
project in which the artist recreates- out of soap - a large
equestrian military statue of Prince William Augustus, the Duke of
Cumberland, that once stood in Cavendish Square, London. Having
initiated a project that contributes to debates on public monument
building, Shin then created subsequent versions of the sculpture
for display in Seoul and Taipei. As An asks, 'what becomes of the
monument when it is transplanted to a national museum dedicated to
modern and contemporary art five thousand miles away?' Jade Keunhye
Lim's essay unpicks the various strands of Shin's Translation
Series, from the classical Greek sculptures through to Toilet
Project (2004-ongoing)- in which portrait busts made of soap are
placed in the washrooms of galleries and museums for visitors to
use when washing their hands - and Weathering Project
(2009-ongoing), in which Shin locates her soap sculptures outdoors
for them to be slowly eroded by the elements. Via cultural
imperialism and the tastes of the affluent classes of the West,
Keunhye Lim questions the value systems of objects and the logic of
their accession into museums - questions that underpin Shin's
practice. How is beauty, cultural significance and financial value
constructed, and how does this translate across cultures and time?
This monograph, beautifully illustrated with over fifty colour and
black and white images, was published by Anomie Publishing in
collaboration with the Korean Cultural Centre UK, London, on the
occasion of'Unfixed: A solo exhibition by Meekyoung Shin', held at
the KCC from 12 November 2013 to 18 January 2014, curated by
Jonathan Watkins. Published by Anomie Publishing in collaboration
with the Korean Cultural Centre UK, London.
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