Meekyoung Shin Bio

Meekyoung Shin

Bio>>

Born in Seoul, Korea, 1967

Lives and works in Seoul and London
Education
2005

Specialist Research Development Program, Slade School of Fine Art in University

College London, London, UK
1998

MFA in Sculpture, Slade School of Fine Art in University College London, London

1993

MFA in Sculpture, Seoul National University, Seoul

1990

BFA in Sculpture, Seoul National University, Seoul

Solo Exhibitions
2007

Translation: Moon Jar, Korean Gallery, British Museum, London

2004

Translation: Self Portrait (Performance), British Museum, London (Curated by

James Putnam)
2002

Translation, Tokyo Humanite Gallery, Tokyo, Japan

Translation, Sungkok Art Museum, Seoul
1995

Shell, Namu Gallery, Seoul

1994

Meekyoung Shin, Seokyoung Gallery, Seoul

Selected Group Exhibitions
2007

Beauty, Desire and Evanescence, Space DA, Beijing, China

Soft Power, Korea Foundation, W Hotel, Seoul (Curated by Suum)

Particules Libres, Nouvelle Generation d’Artistes Coreens en Europe, Cite

Internationale des Arts, Paris, France (Curated by Aeryung Kim)
2006

Looking through Glass, Asia House, London (Curated by Jiyoon Lee)

Softness, Seoul Olympic Museum of Art, Seoul

On, Cover Up, London

Art Brussels, Brussels, Belgium

Wunderkammer: Artificial Kingdom, Usher Gallery, Art and Archaeology Museum in

Lincolnshire, Lincoln, UK (Curated by Edward Allington)
2005

Twenty One: New Work by Student, Slade School of Fine Art, London (Curated by

Ann Elliott)

Telltale, Museum of Ewha Womans University, Seoul

2004

Gwangju Biennale: Korea Express, Gwangju, Korea

Do Again!, Insa Art Center, Seoul

Interim Show, Slade School of Fine Art, London

2003

Chemical Art, Gallery Sagan, Seoul

2002

Christmas of Artist, Ihn Gallery, Seoul

Eleven & Eleven: Korea Japan Contemporary Art 2002, Sungkok Art Museum, Seoul
2001

Alchemy, Sungkok Art Museum, Seoul

Detached House, British Embassy, Seoul

The 5th Moran Sculpture Grand Prix, Moran Museum of Art, Masuk, Korea

The 5th Galerie BHAK Contest of the Young & Remarkable Artist, Galerie BHAK,

Seoul

Soft Outside/Solid Inside: Softness Crossing over Solidness, POSCO Art Museum, Seoul
1999

Fin de Siecle, Riverside Studios Gallery, London

1998

Addressing the Century: 100 Years of Art & Fashion, Hayward Gallery, London

Summer Show, Slade School of Fine Art, London
1997

Korean Young Artist in London, Sacvill Gallery, London

All Changes, Harvey Nichols Department Store (Show Window), London
1994

The Korean Variation and Aim, Seokyoung Gallery, Seoul

Namu Academy, Namu Gallery, Seoul

The Woman & Reality, 21C Gallery, Seoul

1992

The Korean Variation and Aim, Duckwon Gallery, Seoul

1990

The 3rd Space, The 3rd Gallery, Seoul

Translation-Vase'>Works>>

Installation View of Translation-Vase

Translation-Vase, Soap


Translation-Vase, Soap

Installation View of Translation-Vase

Translation-Vase, Soap, 30 x 30 x 50(h) cm

Translation-Toilet Bodhisattva, 2006, Soap, 93(h)cm

Critique>>
Translation is a method of organic communication that can take place in the sphere of each culture or language. The organicism here encompasses specificities of a culture, relationships between members in that culture, and all processes taking place in time.
Living and working in London and Seoul, Meekyung Shin uses soap as her main material to attempt unique reinterpretation. In her work, Shin represents as specific images of ceramics and Buddhas her "translation"of various religious, historical, and cultural problems that she experiences as an Asian artist in the 21st century. And her reinterpretation gets again "translated"by viewers in their distinct conditions and situations through the religious, historical, and cultural contexts in which they exist. With the everyday material of soap, Shin’s work deals with penetration between civilizations, transference, question of originality, copy, and replication.
Whereas she recreated ancient Greek and Roman marble statues with soap in her 2002 one-person exhibition, in the present exhibition, she remakes Asian ceramics in blocks of soap and exhibits them as if they were in a museum. The object that is called "artifact"has its own unique temporality and spatiality, and the artist has paid close attention tothe temporal gaps and spaces generated as such objects move around. A common, everyday material, soap can exhibit a temporal flow in a compressed way because of its trait of easily wearing out. The scent of soap is invisible but can be perceptually experienced. And because of the experiential nature of scent, it has the effect of dividing image and reality. These traits render soap into an appropriate material for the artist’s interests in cultural movements, transfers, and translations that take place over long periods of time.
Shin’s soap sculptures take the same forms of what they represent but possess completely different historical, cultural contents and new contexts. In Translation-Vase, the artist represents a Chinese decorative ceramic, sculpting it from a block of soap, making incisions, filling in, and painting them. Another work in her soap ceramic series is Translation-Glass Bottle, which has the same form as Translation-Vase but is made out of a transparent material. The artifacts created by the artist, as they move between Korea, China, and Britain, encounter audiences of different cultural backgrounds and are understood in different ways depending on their cultural backgrounds and levels of comprehension.
Artifacts are functional things that used to be used by people, but after their cultural values are discovered and moved into museums, they become untouchable objects. Shin is interested in the temporal pause that takes place in this process. Her Translation-Toilet Project consists of soap Buddha statues that were made to be used by audiences in the toilet and then brought back into the gallery, at which moment the process of "artifactization"stops. The soap statues in the toilet stimulate functionality, decorativeness, and audience participation, in the process of which they generate their own provenance, and understood in divergent patterns according to each culture, religion, or gender.
In her travels to many places, Shin is also interested in what makes each place distinctive but cannot be transmitted by images. This reflects the fact that while the artist attempts to replicate museumized or cultural artifacts and to interpret them, they get miscomprehended in different contexts and cannot exist in the same way when they are moved into other temporal and spatial contexts. Transmission, movement, and enjoyment come to possess different contexts. By representing culturally representative artifacts, Shin addresses invisible sensibilities along with the questions of movement and transmission.