Existing comment:
In my work, I seek a harmonious balance between industrial materials, my family history, self-identity, and cultural hybridity.
By combining natural and human-made materials, I assert the failures of our consumption, including the lasting presence of plastics and other industrial consumer products. I pay attention to excessively used materials such as synthetic materials, recycled products, garbage bags, shredded plastic, PVC pipes, zip-ties, and any recycled found fabrics. I transform something alarming and uncomfortable into something restful, playful, and beautiful in an unsettling way.
I combine my Korean cultural spirit, where I draw from nature and natural materials, with the American cultural obsession with consumption to create my own material world. I am interested in the relationship between excess and waste, particularly related to industrialized societies and how minority communities are perceived and treated. How does an object's value shift from worthless to worthy? Discarded to useful? As I create this work, I hope to participate in an act of social healing.
My parents' generation lived in a house with a hay roof, clay walls, wood frame, and paper doors. I still have my father's hay hat and a handbag. crocheted by my mother's hand. These memories are always reflected during the process of making in my studio practice. These organisms are symbolic of the duality of my cultures - natural and unnatural materials become their own physical matter. This juxtaposition of the natural and synthetic creates tension and ambiguity, opening the way for conversations about culture and consumerism to take shape.
Hyunsuk Erickson |