ARTIST STATEMENT
I translate historical documents into textile portraiture to explore how archived memory becomes a vessel for identity construction. My work highlights the simultaneously invisible and hyper visible quality of displaced and diasporic communities, whose existence between multiple cultures yields conflicting ideas of identity, home, and belonging. Drawing on my own experience as a Korean born and raised in Japan, my work speaks to the narratives of diasporic Koreans and “third culture individuals” as a whole, raising questions about how cultural identities are constructed in relation to fractured conceptions of “home”.
Historical documents—such as family portraits, journalistic photography, and traditional Korean folk art—are at the foundation of my practice. Inherited tales of Korean history and familial memory are reinterpreted through my textile portraits, which collage and reconstruct figures of the past. These pieces blur the boundaries of public and personal memory, as well as the historical and the contemporary, translating archived images through nontraditional materials and fiber-based techniques. Historical anachronisms emerge from this clash between image and material, revealing and embracing the contradictory experiences that underlie diasporic heritage.
Each piece is carefully assembled through the intimate acts of hand-dyeing, piecing, stitching, quilting, and weaving. These slow, handiwork processes are an act of remembrance, allowing me to mend the narratives disrupted by displacement and reconnect with the people whose histories inform my own. In representing figures of the past, parts of the captured image become lost, reflecting the inevitable cultural distortion of displaced communities.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Cherin Kim (b. Kobe, Japan) is a fiber artist based in Chicago, IL. Her textile portraits investigate archived memory as a vessel for identity construction by reproducing figures or texts from personal and public historical documents. Drawing on her own upbringing as a Korean born and raised in Japan, Kim’s work raises questions about how diasporic individuals construct cultural identities in relation to fractured conceptions of “home”. Kim is currently attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio, with a concentration in Fiber and Material Studies. She is a recipient of the SAIC Creative Honors Scholarship (2022), SAIC Contemporary Practices Scholarship (2023), SAIC Fashion BodyBuilder Award for Accessories/Headwear/Footwear (2024) and the SAIC Travel Scholarship (2024). Her work has previously been shown in group exhibitions at the Bridgeport Art Center (Chicago, IL), DeVos Place (Grand Rapids, MI), SAIC (Chicago, IL), the Siragusa Gallery (Chicago IL), and the DragonFLY Gallery (Chicago, IL), as well as in solo exhibitions at the CICA Museum (Gimpo, South Korea) and SAIC INCUBATOR (Chicago, IL).
© Cherin Kim