Anticipating New York's Autumn art fair season this September, we have selected six must-see exhibitions. From Lee ShinJa's intricate tapestries at Tina Kim to Ibrahim Mahama's installation repurposed from colonial-era railways at White Cube, here's where to go.
Lee ShinJa: Weaving the Dawn
Tina Kim Gallery, 525 West 21st Street
22 August–28 September 2024
Expect: five decades of work by a South Korean artist whose innovative approach to craft-based mediums anticipated their widespread acceptance.
A pioneer of the tapestry genre in South Korea, Lee ShinJa's woven-fibre surfaces are remarkable in their detail and nuance, appearing almost painted in the convergence of colour and pattern, building into sunsets and mountainscapes.
Lee came to textiles as a child by watching her mother and grandmother sew. She gravitated towards embroidery—then among the limited options for women in applied arts—which she initially innovated using dyes and appliqué before later moving on to deconstruct the fabric and incorporate abstraction.
While some critics argued that she was destroying traditional Korean needlework practices, others applauded her inventiveness. In the 1980s, her work expanded into monumental installations that incorporated bold colours and extensive weaves.
Weaving the Dawn surveys the artist's 50-year practice, from her early appliqué works of the 1960s to her more recent series 'Spirit of Mountain' (1996–1998), which pays tribute to her hometown of Uljin on the Sea of Japan's eastern coast.
In Spirit of Mountain (1997), made from wool and synthetic threads, an abstraction of mountain ranges spreads across four quadrants, with inverted and graduated colour palettes that recall contemporary photo-editing tools, attesting to Lee's imaginative approach.
–Elaine YJ Zheng
