Fiber arts professor shares cultural identity

This week an art installation was shown to the public at the Wooten-Garner House ArtFix Gallery. The art installation, which was created by new fiber arts professor TeaYoun Kim-Kassor, consists of a room of silk-screen ink images on plastic sheets hanging from the ceiling. Each piece of plastic has the same image of a black silhouette with its back turned away from the viewer, but each is unique with the silk screen peeling off in different places. She drew inspiration for the artwork from her own life’s journey.

“I was born in Korea, moved to Japan, and travelled to study in Ohio on a scholarship. There I studied English and I mastered in art education,” Kim-Kassor said. “I wanted to go back to Korea to teach, but my teachers told me to explore the world. So I transferred to the University of Tennessee to get my MFA degree where I taught art classes.”

Kim-Kassor also taught Japanese in UT’s modern language department, but she loved teaching art the most.

“I specifically wanted to teach art because I wanted to share my experiences. It’s a shame not to share things – even food!”

By sharing experiences she has done, Kim-Kassor said that her art collection reflects her own life when she moved to Japan and to America.

“I was in a Korean society within Japan and when I moved to the USA I noticed that it was very much the same situation. I thought, ‘Why do cultures make their own group in a new country? Why don’t they learn the new language?’ ” Kim-Kassor said.

Kim-Kassor explained that the subject matter of her installation art is identity in one’s society, which many people can relate to and learn from. She wanted the viewer to understand what it feels like to be foreign in every sense.

“That is what inspired me to make a lot of installations together that you can walk through,” she said.

Kim-Kassor also had a soundtrack echoing through the room of Korean words that is heard while walking through the installations.

“The sound is very important because I want people to imagine how it feels to be foreign,” Kim-Kassor said.

All of the installations are only painted on one side alluding that every “person” has turned its back on the viewer. The mood of the work is simultaneously gloomy and hopeful to show that there is a chance for this situation to change. Once again, Kim-Kassor’s life is proof that this issue has the potential to get better. She came to GCSU just two months ago and has been completely welcomed into her new community.

“The faculty here are very amazing, fantastic people. It’s important to have support and to love each other and this art department has proven to be an exceptional one,” she said.

Learning to live as a whole can certainly be a challenge and requires adjustments for every member, but once those barriers are crossed, then rest assured those silhouettes will slowly begin to turn around.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Oct 9 2009. Filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry