Kyung-Ah Ham (born 1966) is a contemporary multi-media artist working in Seoul. Her works utilize handmade North Korean textiles to discuss the social and political complexities between South and North Korea.
Kyung-Ah Ham (born 1966) is a contemporary multi-media artist working in Seoul. Her works utilize handmade North Korean textiles to discuss the social and political complexities between South and North Korea.
Kyung-Ah Ham was born in 1966 in Seoul. Growing up, unofficial political propaganda sent from North Korea by helium balloons often appeared around Ham's parent's house in Seoul. As a child, Ham could turn in these pamphlets to her school for a reward. A pamphlet discovered by Ham in 2008 of former supreme leader of North Korea Kim Jong-il rekindled Ham's interest in the function of art and material as a form of unsanctioned communication.[ citation needed ]
Ham received her B.F.A. at Seoul National University (1989). Her undergraduate work highlights the ways power is abused through videos, sculptures, photographs and an assortment of installations. She earned an M.F.A. from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 1995.[ citation needed ]
Kyung-Ah Ham's large body of multimedia work considers power, communication, and anonymity. Her works typically sell at prices ranging from $25,000 to $300,000. [1] Her solo work has been shown at galleries such as Room with a View, Gallery Loop, Seoul (1999), Such Games, Ssamzie Space, Seoul (2008), and Desire and Anesthesia, Artsonje Center, Seoul (2009). She has participated in group shows held at: British Museum, London (2005), Musee Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2010), Stiftung Ludwig Wein, Vienna (2010), National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, Korea (travelled to Kunstmuseum Bonn, 2013), and Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (2014). She also participated in the 9th Guangdong Triennial (2012) and 7th Liverpool Biennial (2012). However, disinterested in selling, Ham prefers to lend her work to exhibitions or sell them to museums, and she has admitted that she keeps much of her work for herself. [2] [3]
An installation at The British Museum in 2010 considered how artists can contribute to the decolonization of the museum wall. Ham's collection of stolen objects from museums around the world includes forks, saucers, knives, vases, and salt and pepper shakers. Each object was displayed in a glass case under lights with extensive labels and a sign on the wall noted “Sign, ‘These doors are alarmed.’[ citation needed ]
Embroideries contain short text as a message to her artisans and viewers. The series includes works like “Big Smile,” created during the Mass Games, and “Are you lonely, too?” as a response to pressure from galleries to outsource her labor to China for convenience.[ citation needed ]
An ongoing project started in 2016 of five chandeliers assembled in South Korea with silk and cotton textiles handmade by anonymous artists in North Korea. The five chandeliers in this show represent the five cities of the participating countries of the 1945 Potsdam Declaration. These chandeliers symbolize the division of foreign powers that divided Korea in 1945, all of which have fallen as represented by the embroidered chandeliers positioned on the floor of the gallery space.[ citation needed ]
Ham's process begins with a digitized censored pattern that she sends to female artists in North Korea with the help of Chinese and Russian mediators. The images and content she highlight often would be removed from the public by North Korean officials but circulate freely in South Korea. A group of anonymous artisans is paid to convert her patterns into embroideries, using bright silk thread and exquisitely fine stitching. Receiving textiles from North Korea can take up to a year and a half as they are smuggled back to her using her intermediaries and bribed officials in both North and South Korea. Ham acquires the embroideries folded up in a black plastic bag, reeking of cigarette smoke. Ham notes that the colors of the silk thread used are often very unexpectedly bright, which she considers may help the artisans as they work in dimly lit facilities. After she receives the pieces, she unfolds and spreads the fabrics out in her studio before she begins to affix them to Southern-made chandelier frames. Her work is shown and sold internationally. Each hand-embroidered image contains a label that lists the materials used, the number of hours the work took, and other factors of the creative process like ‘censorship’ and ‘ideology’. Ham's embroideries are also notably influenced by recorded footage of Pyongyang's specialty-realist Mass Games. [4]
Hams's use of illegal outsourced labor puts her at high risk as the artist and negotiator of these transactions. Both Ham and her team of anonymous female artisans could face extreme consequences for these transactions. Ham could be criminally persecuted for her facilitation, and those working for her in North Korea could face unjust imprisonment or execution for their contributions. [5] Some of Kyungah Ham's works have been confiscated by North Korean Authorities, and Ham cites several patterns sent to North Korea that were edited and censored by those working for her.[ citation needed ]
Ham's spoken publicly about the effects of this project on her mental health, in addition to the experiences and feelings she has listed under project labels. The Embroidery Project, which involves illegal cash transactions, bribes, and intermediaries has made stress a permanent fixture in her life. [6]
Out of necessity, Ham has become protective over her image and the details of her process. Available sources that cite Ham specifically are reviewed by Ham before publication, and she declines most press coverage.[ citation needed ]
Embroidery is the craft of decorating fabric or other materials using a needle to apply thread or yarn. Embroidery may also incorporate other materials such as pearls, beads, quills, and sequins. In modern days, embroidery is usually seen on caps, hats, coats, overlays, blankets, dress shirts, denim, dresses, stockings, scarfs, and golf shirts. Embroidery is available in a wide variety of thread or yarn colour. It is often used to personalize gifts or clothing items.
Blackwork, sometimes historically termed Spanish blackwork, is a form of embroidery generally worked in black thread, although other colours are also used on occasion, as in scarletwork, where the embroidery is worked in red thread. Originating in Tudor period England, blackwork typically, though not always, takes the form of a counted-thread embroidery, where the warp and weft yarns of a fabric are counted for the length of each stitch, producing uniform-length stitches and a precise pattern on an even-weave fabric. Blackwork may also take the form of free-stitch embroidery, where the yarns of a fabric are not counted while sewing.
Crewel embroidery, or crewelwork, is a type of surface embroidery using wool. A wide variety of different embroidery stitches are used to follow a design outline applied to the fabric. The technique is at least a thousand years old.
Fiber art refers to fine art whose material consists of natural or synthetic fiber and other components, such as fabric or yarn. It focuses on the materials and on the manual labor on the part of the artist as part of the works' significance, and prioritizes aesthetic value over utility.
Korean embroidery techniques and artifacts have a long history, but there is the most evidence from the Joseon Dynasty, after the 14th century in Korea. This article talks about the history, styles, preservation, artists, and examples of screens, costumes, and domestic wares of this exacting and beautiful art form.
Mary "May" Morris was an English artisan, embroidery designer, jeweller, socialist, and editor. She was the younger daughter of the Pre-Raphaelite artist and designer William Morris and his wife and artists' model, Jane Morris.
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Opus Anglicanum or English work is fine needlework of Medieval England done for ecclesiastical or secular use on clothing, hangings or other textiles, often using gold and silver threads on rich velvet or linen grounds. Such English embroidery was in great demand across Europe, particularly from the late 12th to mid-14th centuries and was a luxury product often used for diplomatic gifts.
Phulkari refers to the folk embroidery of the Punjab. Although Phulkari means floral work, the designs include not only flowers but also cover motifs and geometrical shapes. The main characteristics of Phulkari embroidery are use of darn stitch on the wrong side of coarse cotton cloth with coloured silken thread. Punjabi women create innumerable alluring and interesting designs and patterns by their skilful manipulation of the darn stitch. According to Kehal (2009), a cloth where only a few flowers are embroidered is called a Phulkari. The other types are distinct varieties. The traditional varieties of Phulkaris are large items of cloth and include Chope, Tilpatr, Neelak and Bagh. Sometimes, the Bagh is given separate categorization of its own as on other varieties of a Phulkari, parts of the cloth is visible, whereas in a Bagh, the embroidery covers the entire garment so that the base cloth is not visible. Further, in contemporary modern designs, simple and sparsely embroidered dupattas, odhinis, and shawls, made for everyday use, are referred to as phulkaris, whereas clothing items that cover the entire body, made for special and ceremonial occasions such as weddings are called baghs. The Phulkari continues to be an integral part of Punjabi weddings to the present day.
Embroidery in India includes dozens of embroidery styles that vary by region and clothing styles. Designs in Indian embroidery are formed on the basis of the texture and the design of the fabric and the stitch. The dot and the alternate dot, the circle, the square, the triangle, and permutations and combinations of these constitute the design.
A bojagi is a traditional Korean wrapping cloth. Bojagi are typically square and can be made from a variety of materials, though silk or ramie are common. Embroidered bojagi are known as subo, while patchwork or scrap bojagi are known as jogak bo.
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