I Packed My Bag are ceramic objects in multicolored mesh bags are reminiscent of fossils and bulky, fragile fashion bags. Each individual pottery is sculpted using a former East German mesh bag as a mold. The bag‘s mesh structure imprints itself as a pattern on the surface of the clay. Clear distinctions as to who is holding whom, or who is carrying whom and who is carrying, are fading away.
I Packed My Bag deals with everyday objects as relics from the near or distant past, which continue to possibly have effects as ghosts in our culture, environment and society. It is an attempt to create new forms and compositions with found material, interwoven with nature, consumption and history.
In an exhibition at Alternate Space LOOP the ceramics were presented on repurposed styrofoam buoys collected from South Korean shores. Like the mesh bag on the clay, fishing lines also leave their marks on the styrofoam - shared qualities that lend a sort of visual uniformity to the presentation. The multi-component sculptures in the installation establish collaborative relationships between solid and flexible material, permeable and impermeable, light and heavy, East and West, remembering and forgetting, handcrafted and industrial.
photographed by Kunwoo Kim, with Sandra Eden and Aurora as models
A quote by Ursula K. Le Guin's
It is hard to tell a really gripping tale of how I wrestled a wild-oat seed from its husk, and then another, and then another, and then another, and then another, and then I scratched my gnat bites, and Ool said something funny, and we went to the creek and got a drink and watched newts for a while, and then I found another patch of oats.... No, it does not compare, it cannot compete with how I thrust my spear deep into the titanic hairy flank while Oob, impaled on one huge sweeping tusk, writhed screaming, and blood sprouted everywhere in crimson torrents, and Boob was crushed to jelly when the mammoth fell on him as I shot my unerring arrow straight through eye to brain.
That story not only has Action, it has a Hero. Heroes are powerful. Before you know it, the men and women in the wild-oat patch and their kids and the skills of makers and the thoughts of the thoughtful and the songs of the singers are all part of it, have all been pressed into service in the tale of the Hero. But it isn’t their story. It’s his.
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The first cultural device was probably a recipient.... Many theorizers feel that the earliest cultural inventions must have been a container to hold gathered products and some kind of sling or net carrier.
photographed by Kunwoo Kim,
