Kyungmi Shin, Origin Stories

Craft Contemporary, Los Angeles | May 26 - September 8, 2024

Origin Stories reveals Kyungmi Shin’s personal narrative as a Korean woman and indigenous ethnographer. Using painting, mixed media and immersive installations, Shin builds the worlds she needs to inhabit to reflect how memory and belief shape aesthetics and the stories we tell about ourselves. 

With a focus on immigrant experiences, ethno-mythological symbolism and found chinoiserie objects, Shin illuminates the convergences of imagination and place making. She shows us how the spaces in between make room for speculative futures. Shin reveals and conceals our global histories and experiences, paying particular attention to ideas that transcend borders even as she recognizes the difficulty many people have in doing the same.  

Kyungmi Shin layers disparate imagery to investigate the intersections of indigeneity and empire. She sifts visual narratives of Korean shamanism, historic imperial paintings, sculpture and architecture, as well as her personal archives, to consider how multiple iconographies textures knowledges and understanding.  Scale and rich color palettes draw us into Shin’s paintings and installations, to include our own contributions to her world building mission. Thus, she creates a necessary collaboration that we didn’t know we needed until she generously and patiently invites us in.

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