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Korean Artist Jaeyoun Shin Steps ‘Through the Looking Glass’

Korean Artist Jaeyoun Shin Steps ‘Through the Looking Glass’

“I knew who I was this morning, but I've changed a few times since then,” writes Lewis Carroll in his classic Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. Seoul-based visual artist Jaeyoun Shin explores her subconscious universe just as Alice does with her series Through the Looking Glass, a bold exploration of pain and personal identity through therapeutic means.

Each piece in Shin’s mixed-media series is visually tied by a pitch-black background, which represents the stillness of her mindscape. “This dark background is my thoughts, calm or silent emotion, and self-consciousness,” she tells NOT REAL ART. Decorating her “mindscapes” with obsessive line work, florals, and Asian-style paper collage, Shin describes “the boundary of safe and unsafe social environments,” rendering her own vulnerabilities in shimmering Gelly Roll inks. Just as our memories, emotions, and thoughts shape our personal identities, Shin’s work acts as a record of her evolving identity, each piece representing the artist’s individual memories and experiences.

Seoul-based artist Jaeyoun Shin explores trauma, pain, and personal identity in 'Through the Looking Glass,' a series of luminescent mixed-media works.
‘We are Not Close’

The dark backdrops in Through the Looking Glass also allude to Shin’s search for personal refuge in a strange land. “I felt like a stranger between Korea and the United States,” she writes of her time at Savannah College of Art and Design, where she received an MFA in 2016. As a form of therapy, Shin began processing her anxieties and traumatic experiences through her artwork. “The dark background has dual meanings,” she explains. “One of them is a refuge where my unstable self can rest; the other is my hidden trauma.”

Shin’s artwork contains characteristics of her own personality—she often views herself as fragile and vulnerable, even weak—comparing herself to an unguarded bee in the mouth of a Venus flytrap. That’s also why she uses delicate mediums, such as paper and thin washes of watercolor.

Shin may see herself as fragile, but Through the Looking Glass ultimately challenges the notion of vulnerability as weakness. Processing her past with captivating colors and an unshakeable nerve, Shin guides us into the recesses of her own mind with steady hands, clear eyes, and a full heart.


New Book By Katie Love

From Cult To Comedy, A Memoir, by Katie Love

Author Katie Love: The Comedian Turning Heartbreak Into Humor [Podcast] coverThe year is 1970. The horror soap opera “Dark Shadows” is all the rage, the Vietnam War is raging and nine-year-old Katie, an imaginative and independent latch-key kid, comes home from school to discover her mother’s suicide.

Taken in by her older sister who has recently become a Jehovah’s Witness, Katie is shown an illustration from a bible picture book featuring wild animals peacefully lounging by a pool of water, surrounded by happy people picking fruit. An enticing offer is made: “Katie, this is Paradise. Do you want to see Mom again, happy and living forever? All you have to do is follow all of Jehovah’s commandments and you can be with Mom again.”

Mom happy and living forever? Two tickets to Paradise, please!

So begins Katie’s zealous quest to attain perfection and entrance into a utopian world which promises peace, love, and happiness. She discovers a much darker world. “Two Tickets to Paradise, from Cult to Comedy” tells the hilarious and heartbreaking story of an earnest, bible-toting kid intent on saving the world, and follows her metamorphosis into a boisterous comedian intent on saving herself through the healing powers of humor.

 

“The dark background has dual meanings. One of them is a refuge where my unstable self can rest; the other is my hidden trauma.” — Jaeyoun Shin

Through the Looking Glass

Seoul-based artist Jaeyoun Shin explores trauma, pain, and personal identity in 'Through the Looking Glass,' a series of luminescent mixed-media works.
‘Through the Looking Glass I’
Seoul-based artist Jaeyoun Shin explores trauma, pain, and personal identity in 'Through the Looking Glass,' a series of luminescent mixed-media works.
‘Through the Looking Glass II’
Seoul-based artist Jaeyoun Shin explores trauma, pain, and personal identity in 'Through the Looking Glass,' a series of luminescent mixed-media works.
‘Through the Looking Glass III’
‘Deficiency’
‘The Return’
‘Blank Space’
‘Do Not Cross the Line’

Jaeyoun Shin: Website | Instagram | Facebook | Purchase Work

All photos published with permission of the artist.

Want to be featured in Lightbox? Email editor@notrealart.com with a short introduction and a link to your online portfolio or three images of your work.

Jenna Eberhardt

Jenna Eberhardt (she/her/hers) is NOT REAL ART’s associate editor. Jenna is a writer and working artist from Asheville, NC, who specializes in watercolor botanicals and dreamy moonscapes. A true night owl, Jenna enjoys a minimum of two cups of coffee per day and isn’t afraid of the dark when she’s up late painting. As a registered yoga instructor with a background in health and wellness, Jenna believes in the brain-boosting power of a regular mindfulness practice, regarding rest and relaxation as a necessary part of the creative process.

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