On a recent Wednesday afternoon, hushed “oohs” and “ahhs” could be heard coming from a lower-level gallery at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) in California. A cluster of museum visitors was taking in a retrospective of the South Korean artist Lee ShinJa, marveling at the breadth of the 95-year-old artist’s output as well as her varied techniques in fiber arts. Before stumbling on the exhibit, none of them had heard of Lee.
“Lee ShinJa essentially defined fiber art and textile arts in Korea,” Victoria Sung, the senior curator at BAMPFA who organized the retrospective of more than 50 years of Lee’s work, said in a video call. “But even in Korea today, Lee is not incredibly well-known, and globally, she’s just starting to get recognition.”
A cadre of curators and gallerists are attempting to change that, with Lee’s woven, felted, embroidered and crocheted fiber artworks popping up in exhibitions like the one at BAMPFA, and in the permanent collections of major institutions like the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Lee’s work has also recently been making the rounds at international art fairs, including at Art Basel Paris this Friday to Sunday, where the gallerist Tina Kim is devoting her booth — her first time at the fair — entirely to Lee.
“I have seen strong textile artists exhibited in Paris, such as Olga de Amaral and Anni Albers, and Lee ShinJa is of the same generation,” Kim said in a recent video interview from her New York office of her decision to showcase Lee. “I wanted to show that there was also a pioneering fiber artist in Korea.”
Lee’s abstract, colorful and sometimes sculptural works will make a strong showing in Kim’s booth, which is part of the fair’s special Premise section, in which 10 galleries present the work of a single artist.
Lee began her practice in the 1950s and 1960s making smaller-scale works, but by the 1970s her work increased in size and often became three-dimensional, undulating off the wall with drapes, folds and dangling tufts of yarn or strips of felt. It also became bolder in color, with her later work notably exploring the color red to represent sunsets in her hometown Uljin, on South Korea’s east coast, and as a symbol of deep emotions, like grief.
From the beginning, as a woman artist working in textiles, Lee had to pave her own way. “There was no curriculum for textile arts in Korea, and there were no teachers to guide me,” Lee said through a translator in a recent email interview, referring to her studies in art at Seoul National University and, once the Korean War broke out in 1950, at Busan Wartime Nations University. “I had to find my own path. But that gave me the freedom to experiment with textile materials however I wished, without restriction.”
This spirit of experimentation is a common thread in Lee’s oeuvre, as is her artistic inspiration in nature. Her work ranges from appliquéd and embroidered pieces depicting abstract animals and figures, to woven tapestries with patterns inspired by natural phenomena such as sunsets and mountains, to felt works incorporating dip dyeing meant to evoke the transitioning colors of autumn leaves.
Throughout her career, Lee tested the boundaries of what was considered art, incorporating everyday materials like flour sacks, mosquito nets and thread from thrifted sweaters into her textiles.
“At the time it was quite experimental and even a bit controversial,” Lee said, reflecting on the criticism of her first solo exhibition in 1965. “Some people said it looked like I had embroidered with my feet rather than my hands. But I felt these materials were the most honest reflections of the reality I was living in. Elevating them into artwork became both my work, and my own personal form of resistance.”
As Lee expanded her art practice in textiles, her impact on the arts in South Korea rippled out. She taught at Duksung Women’s University, in Seoul, for over 30 years, where she became its first dean of the college of arts. Besides introducing applied arts like textiles to the school, Lee also pushed her students away from the traditional Korean apprenticeship model and toward creative exploration.
“I used to tell my students: ‘Even a single line you draw must embody your philosophy.’ Art must express thought and philosophy, not merely technique,” she recalled.
The felt work was created just a few years after Lee exhibited at South Korea’s National Art Exhibition in 1972, which marked the first time that tapestry was presented as a fine art form in an official Korean exhibition. “That moment will forever stand out to me,” said Lee.
“Lee’s uniqueness lies in combining artistic innovation with structural impact,” Sunglim Kim, a Dartmouth art historian who specializes in Korean art and culture, said in an email. “She reframed materials traditionally confined to women’s hands as a language of contemporary art. She treats fiber as a site for thinking about gender, memory, landscape, and resilience.”
Indeed, Lee’s steadfast commitment to freedom of expression as a form of resistance seethes beneath the surface of her fiber works. Many of the artist’s textiles appear highly formal and controlled because of her intricate weaving techniques and high level of embroidery skill. However, Lee will often arrange individual threads or pieces of fabric to convey movement and improvisation. “I hope that anyone standing before my work can feel the grains of life within it,” she said.
As Lee and the wider medium of fiber art steadily gain more acclaim in the global art world, the artist is proud that she never stopped listening to her creative voice. “For a long time, my work was not understood,” Lee said. “But I didn’t mind. Even if others turned away, I had no choice but to follow my own path. That was my life and my art.”
—Lauren Gallow
