'Yeesookyung (이수경, born 1963) is a South Korean multi-disciplinary artist and sculptor best known for her Translated Vase series which utilizes the broken fragments of priceless Korean ceramics to form a new sculpture. Yee's biomorphic sculptures highlight the beauty and possibility after rupture. Her other works in installation and drawings explore psycho-spiritual introspection, cultural deconstruction, kitsch, as well as Korean traditional arts and history melded with contemporary aesthetics.
Biography
Yeesookyung was born in Seoul, Korea in 1963. She attended Seoul National University in 1989 to study Western painting for her BFA and MFA. Despite her choice of major, her early works from the 1990s were mainly installations, video art, and performance. These works were influenced by the post-Minjung movement that was more socially focused and critiqued the state of Korean society. Her religious background includes both Buddhism and Catholicsim, and she is not particularly beholden to one or another. She views religions as an expression of human desire. Personal narrative, spirituality, and references from popular culture are continuous themes within her art.
In 2001, she was a participant in the Albisola Biennale in Italy and she was interested in the ceramic culture of Italy due to the historical accounts of how Pablo Picasso and Lucio Fontana would make ceramics there. The Biennale connected local Italian artisans with international guest artists to create collaborations for the exhibition. Thus Yee was introduced to a female Italian potter and showed her a Korean poem that sung the praises of Joseon pottery which was written in 1947 by Kim Sang-ok called “Ode to Porcelain.” The potter had no prior knowledge of Joseon pottery and therefore used her imagination that she gained from reading the poem to create 12 white porcelain pieces in the style of 18th century Joseon vessels. The collaboration was called Translated Vase Albisola. While the name of this piece coincides with her famous sculptures they are not comparable. Regarding this piece Yee remarked that, “The Joseon white porcelain was translated into real objects, from just intangible words to tangible artworks.” However this experiment got her interested in Joseon pottery and she was then introduced to through a friend to the famous ceramicist, Paek Lim-hang, who was active in Incheon, Gyeonggido. A camera crew was there filming the master potter and she witnessed him breaking almost all of the pots that came out of the kiln due to the smallest defects or flaw. This act is to keep the quality and price of the potter's wares very high but she was shocked by how merciless the process was. With the permission of the potter she took all the broken fragments home and one day say that two broken pieces could fit together like a puzzle. From then on she started glueing pieces together and covering the glue with gold. This marked the beginning of her world-renowned Translated Vase series.
Yee celebrates discarded pieces that were deemed unworthy and grants them a new life by reassembling them into new forms. She sees potentiality in things that are discarded and places value on all existing things as they are. This act of “translating” value is a process in which the artist pays homage to psychic wounds through the shamanistic redemption of the once discarded object(s). Each Translated Vase is a collaboration between Yee and another artist since she is using their discarded pieces. In 2012, she used the pieces of Young Sook Park, whose known for her moon jars, to make a sculpture of an actual moon.
In 2004 she also created her Daily Drawing series as a way to record her thoughts and feelings during a tumultuous time in her life. Through these drawings, she explored how to confront and heal psychological wounds through art. Rather than turning away or trying to forget about such wounds, she embraces suffering and hardship as a way to reach transcendence. This mindset of embracing and reviving memories through wounds is also present within her into her landmark Translated Vase series.