Bio
Yeon Jin Kim is a visual artist and filmmaker, born in South Korea and based in New York City.
Kim's most recent solo exhibitions were held at Pilseung-sa, Seoul, South Korea, the Society for Domestic Museology in New York and Albright College in Reading, PA.
Her NYSCA supported public Jogakbo project is currently installed in Inwood Hill Park in New York City.
Her films have recently been screened at the Philadelphia Asian Film Festival, New Filmmakers New York, Blow-Up Arthouse Film Fest Chicago and the Glimmerglass Film Festival in Cooperstown, NY.
Her work was featured in the book "50 Contemporary Women Artists", edited by Heather Zises and John Gosslee in 2018.
She has done numerous residencies, including Outpost Artist Resources, the Teton Art Lab, the Winter Workspace Program at Wave Hill, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, the Fountainhead Residency, I-Park, the Abrons Arts Center, the Islip Museum, Sculpture Space, the Saltonstall Foundation and Yaddo.
She teaches at Binghamton University, SUNY.
ACC Gallery presents solo exhibition by Yeon Jin Kim under the title, “This, That and the Other”
As a child, Yeon Jin Kim was introduced to Jogakbo by her aunt, who owned a Hanbok (Korean traditional garment) shop. Her aunt was particularly talented at needle crafts and her Jogakbo were lovely and visually sophisticated. Examples were gifted to family members, with Kim’s mother passing one down to her, which has become an important influence.
Jogakbo developed as a way for lower-class people to wrap gifts for weddings and other celebratory events in the 17th to 19th centuries. Scrap pieces of fabric were stitched together, much like quilts, to create attractive wrappings.
Kim was inspired to update this historic Korean art form by expanding the size and replacing the traditional silk or ramie with commercial plastic bags, and even drug baggies found on the streets in her neighborhood. Recently she received a New York State Council on the Arts Grant to design and fabricate Jogakbo, using weather-proof materials, to create banners with her fellow artist Noelle Salaun, installed by the City in Inwood Hill Park in Manhattan.
Kim hopes to inspire an appreciation of Jogakbo and other Korean needlecrafts, which she feels have been undervalued in relation to Western art forms.
Kim is also deeply invested in an ongoing investigation of paper collage, utilizing various scrap papers she has found and collected for over a decade. Initially inspired by Korean Jogakbo, other influences range from the Gee’s Bend Quilters to Hannah Hoch and a wide range of other modern and contemporary collagists. Working intuitively, she improvises patterns, structures and hybrids enticing the viewer to engage, imagine and interpret.
