I'm Joanna Marsh, the James
Dicke Curator of Contemporary Art at the
Smithsonian American Art Museum.
We're sitting in the newest exhibition,
'Jean Shin: Common Threads.' I'm joined
by the artist, Jean Shin, for a
conversation today about the exhibition
and Jean's work. Welcome, Jean.
Thank you, Joanna.
I want to talk about the new commission
piece 'Everyday Monuments,' which is
debuting in this show and which you
produced specifically for the exhibition
with the support of the American Art
Museum. I know you went through a lengthy
process of thinking about what would be
right, both for this institution but also
this venue in Washington, DC.
How did you arrive upon 'Everyday
Monuments' as a concept?
I imagined the
monuments that we carry in our lives,
trying to make it personal again, so I
chose the trophy as this object that we
have, some of us have, I guess, in our
lives. It too memorializes a
personal aspect of your own history,
whether it was a childhood memory of
playing a sport or something much later
in your adult life that you gave up to
pursue other things. My plan was to
deconstruct each one of them. By
removing the trophies of their
sports aspects-- which would be outrageous
actions of gestures of sports, and the
basketball, the rackets, the bats. Then
they were now emptied again like
the National Mall, emptied of their props.
Then we hand sculpted new props and
also used dollhouse things that were of
the same scale and incorporated their
arms back into gestures of work. So they
were doing mundane things like typing,
standing at a podium
talking, striking a hammer, being a
mechanic, delivering mail. All the things
that we see around us of people at work,
or driving. These tasks
represented many occupations, whether it
was a taxi driver or just someone
driving to work, or a stay at home mom
pushing a stroller. I have a relationship
from DC having grown up nearby in
Bethesda, Maryland. I've known the
city from afar. It is a local
community that I know and yet we all
know the Capitol in Washington, DC on a
symbolic level. Referencing these
national monuments that we have - the
Lincoln Memorial, the National Mall, the
Capitol. When I went to
visit, I was also struck by the fact that
when you look at the city there is this
vast space in the middle of the city
that is empty. The National Mall really
for me was the inspiration. It's
something that you imagine from a
distance, this critical mass,
filling the space with people.
I was struck also by the amazing
generosity of families who had gone
through loss. The trophies were
memorializing people in a way for these
families, and so there [were] wonderful
donations by people who said "this is for
my father who had passed away."
That was amazing to see that people
understood the gesture and that gestures
could be translated and extended. These
trophies, in essence, are that kind of
bittersweet memory, you know? You love
them and you also wish that things
were different.
Right. There's an incredible nostalgia attached to these objects.
Yes. And I'm sure for people who were
near going professional, also with having
won some of these trophies. There
was a point in their life where they had
to decide - am I going to make sacrifices
and be a sports star? Can my family and
my partner support this lifestyle? Or, you
know, do I have to deviate or can I not
support this and that dream isn't coming
to? So it's really full of bittersweet
memories in some way. I think the
project sort of acknowledges the breath
of that.
This is 'Chance City,' which you
first created in 2001, correct?
You had a variety of different incarnations
based on the various venues that it's
been shown at. It's shown here in this
extreme corner and I think is my
favorite piece in the exhibition. You'll
forgive me for saying that. It is so
exquisitely beautiful and conceptually
rich. I'd love to talk about this
idea of vulnerability as it relates to
'Chance City' and the notion of the
systems which we create, the
infrastructures that we create all
around us being so vulnerable to
collapse, to failure, to chance.
To chance. This piece is comprised
of all losing lottery tickets. Let's talk about it a little bit.
Yeah, this
project is literally a house of cards.
We're standing very close to something
that I think is a living structure.
It's responding and it's held up
purely by gravity and friction. There's
no inner adhesive to them. My assistants
began in the very, very hard corner there
and then we built the structure up one
tower at a time and moved away as we got
to the edges of the city. I think of it
in terms of a performance of the
self and a dedication to this practice,
but also just getting into that mode of
believing that you could make these
structures. I think of that in terms
of our economics, our family
life and family planning for economics
too, our global infrastructure, that really,
the exchange of goods, one at a
time. You build something that is a
thriving economy or if it is full of too
much optimism can collapse overnight by
something that was structurally unsound
to begin with.
What's also interesting is
the lottery aspect to it-- that each card
is an investment of someone's, that I
don't know. These strangers have invested
a dollar, two dollars, five dollars and
together it's over twenty-five thousand
dollars here represented, of someone
having spent this money. Then the
type of labor that we've spent
capitalizing on that potential once
again. But it's also watching the
optimism that we have. That, to me, is
a city, like any other city.
I also like the notion of
thinking in terms of gains and chance in
the lottery strategy, because the more
times you play and spend your dollar, if
you spend one dollar a week, the chances
of winning are very slim. Where people
who truly win and are addicted to this
game play thousands of dollars in a
given month and their chances are much
higher. So the notion of
investment, you know? But many people
fantasize, like you're going to win
instantly, right? This instant scratch- and-win,
in one second you could be the
millionaire, but in fact, the reality
that I'm presenting is actually that's
not true. -laughs-
Very few, in fact, win. So it is, as we've
said before, this illusion, this
illusory promise that may be a win, it's
about hope, really. In spite of the
fact that these are all losing lottery
tickets there is this pervasive optimism
as part of the piece, because presumably
the people who have lost on these
scratch-and-win tickets have gone out the
next day and bought more, because they
continue to nurse the hope that they
will, in fact build something.
Well thinking about this idea of things
that go unnoticed, that's true of so many
of the objects that you work with.
There are things that surround us every day but we
don't really give full attention to.
I guess I'm wondering whether it's true
for all of your pieces, whether you come
to the objects sort of after you've
conceived a project. I'm thinking
actually specifically of 'Unraveling,'
which is such an incredibly complex
piece. Let's talk just briefly about the
physical and practical complexities of
this piece, which we've been installing
for the last five to seven days and is
incredibly labor intensive, as are many
of your works in this show. But that one
in particular, if you want to just
comment a little bit about the process?
Just like those nomadic tribes of
people who come to the city, it's like that.
You arrive at the museum and we have
literally boxes of sweaters that are
just deconstructed as spools of yarn
with their names all attached with the
donors. We're making a physical
attachment to the walls and I call
it, like, almost shingling the corner with
these very, very soft, wooly existences of
people. It gets very soft and
colorful, you know? But with the
architecture that is here, we also wanted
people to engage being under the piece
and seeing the networks above your head,
so that meant lifting us up to these
14-foot ceilings.
We were working all over scaffolds, not only
literally pinning every sweater to it
but every connection and someone's
connection may be as little as three but
as big as 80, you know? So their yarn
would have to hit 80 sweaters and 80
sweaters would have to come to their one
destination. Our
assistants and the museum staff were
completely entangled in literally the
web that's going across you and also the
wonderful idea of teamwork that happens,
because it's not just 'let me hang the
painting and I'm done, could you maybe
tell me if it's straight?' This is people
negotiating, 'This yarn has to go to that
and you're in the perfect spot, can you
reach? Can you reach that, extend that?'
Again, it's about social exchange. It's
about interacting and having a dialogue,
right? Yeah. The piece could not be
installed without that level of
communication on the part of your staff and the
museum staff.
In some way also by
building this again each time, people get
to understand this network. Many people
know now who Melissa Chiu is. That name
has been connected and I go, 'oh, here she
is, so she has a long list of people we
need to connect her to.' They kind of
understand who the players of this
network are, who are the significant
persons, and I think that's so
interesting. That there's a learning
curve to become familiar with this
network, that is just not sweaters, but
it's actually the person we're
connecting. I sort of feel like the
the piece literally has a life of its
own. The complexities of being
intertwined in the network is very
fascinating to me and also the
requirement of teamwork and getting
familiar with the names.
In essence the piece relives itself
through the installation process.
Right, right.
You know, I was initially inspired by
'Invisible Cities,' that tells tales of
different cities. I knew this show
was going to travel to different cities.
That took the initial inspiration.
One city that was
described was in a city that the
participants, when they engaged in some
sort of relationship, would tie a knot as
a signifying moment that you and I had
had this relationship. Once they
establish this relationship, of
course, you go on and there's a million knots
that you establish by your day-to-day
living. They create this complete
web of strings and they can't exist
anymore, because the complexity of that
negotiation is fully visualized.
They're a nomadic tribe that then picks
up and starts to plant themselves in a new city,
elsewhere, and starts the whole process.
The first relationship, here we are.
I loved that
idea of a city full of people
negotiating and meeting the same
relationships one again in a new city.
It was exactly the dilemma I was running into -
how do I make a project about this?
The notions of Asian American
identity, 'who are we?' And it's something
that's very complex and mixed with our
personal identity but also the global
identity in history that came before us.
Part of that idea of
questioning identity was that it was
a show based on Asian-Americans, and sort
of celebrating the complexity of that,
and so I asked the curators, who are sort
of tapped into that network, to again
start with them. They donate their own
sweater and it represents them
completely. It's their intimate sweater
that they purchased for all their aesthetic
reasons about it being about them.
It really capitalized the notion of
identity very abstractly. But I also love
that when one unravels a sweater,
that this human scale of
something so intimate and fitted for
someone then gets obstructed,
dismantled. I was imagining people
like Melissa Chiu, who is so connected in
the Asian-American art world, that at the
end of her day she must feel like so
much has been taken away from her.
The generosity of connecting with
someone in someway means that a little
part of yourself, your time,
energy, is gone, you know? So that,
the people who are connected, who
are so important, also diminish in some ways.
Their sweaters physically become smaller,
Because they know so many people.