This content was published: February 16, 2015. Phone numbers, email addresses, and other information may have changed.
Silent Scream
Cascade Paragon Arts Gallery
By Eun-Kyung Suh
- Dates: January 16 – February 19, 2015
- Opening reception in the gallery: Friday, January 16, 3 – 5pm, Terrell Hall 102, PCC Cascade Campus
- Artist talk: Friday, January 16, 2 – 3pm, Terrell Hall 122, PCC Cascade Campus
- Gallery hours: 9am-5pm, Monday – Friday
Cascade Gallery presents new installation work by Eun-Kyung Suh that honors and memorializes the extreme diasporic experiences of Korean “Comfort Women” in Japan’s military brothels during World War II. Using silk organza, Suh creates boxes printed with photographic images of the victims and their journal entries. Grids of portrait boxes – incorporating photographs taken decades after their enslavement – give agency to “Comfort Women” and represent safe containers for personal memories.
Suh’s work draws on the history of World War II, during which 200,000 young women were recruited and forced into sexual slavery in Japan’s military brothels in Asia. In 1990, the first South Korean woman came forward and requested a formal apology from the Japanese government and compensation for the thousands of victims. Today, only about 50 of the 239 women who publicly acknowledged their experiences are alive in Korea. Eun-Kyung Suh incorporates portraits of the survivors and their testimonies into silk organza boxes to express symbolic sympathy for their suffering.
Since 2008, Eun-Kyung Suh has been creating a series of sculptural vessels as metaphors for a variety of individual, family and social memories. Stitched and constructed of diaphanous textiles, these sculptural vessels reference Bojagi, a traditional art form in Korea. Bojagi is the wrapping cloth used to cover, store or carry everything from precious ritual objects to everyday clothes and common household belongings. Recently, Suh has explored the emotional resonance of the diaspora of Korean immigrants and adoptees in the United States. She continues to create textile sculpture and installation work, transforming the homely act of sewing and converting traditional cloths into art that embraces life and society.
Eun-Kyung Suh received her MFA from the University of Iowa, and she is Professor of Art at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. She has exhibited widely across the United States and abroad. This is her first exhibition in the Pacific Northwest. Read more about Eun-Kyung Suh’s work.