Shin-hee Chin

Cultural context has most shaped my work as I have spent half my life in South Korea and the past two decades in the United States. I have had equal exposure to two vastly different cultures. In my years dealing with issues of a bi-cultural lifestyle, art has helped me reconcile the conflicting nature of these influences. My work reflects this binary approach – female vs. male, East vs. West, art vs. craft – all those paradoxes inhabit the same space just as both Korea and America co-exist in me. From these cultures, I draw inspiration specifically from the feminist tradition, Christian spirituality, and Eastern philosophy.

In my work, I attempt to carve out what I proudly call a feminine territory in which the voices of effaced and silenced women reverberate and to translate the experiences of women in a way that people of different ethnic backgrounds and cultural experiences can understand.