Ina Rhee
Barebone Net
Prompt: Develop a wearable body extension OR object inspired by the physical body/ ephemeral body inspired by cultural objects- artifacts, personal story, with a focus on connection and disconnection. Students will be focusing on the voluminosity of the forms, the interaction between the object and the body. How the form changes the body perception, how it changes the function of the body. Think about ideas around connection and disconnection, to the body, space, relationships, etc
This wearable sculpture is a macrame weaving of skirt. It represents my strange, contradictory, and confusing connection with my Korean identity. I grew up incredibly ‘American-ized’ and didn’t think too much about my Korean heritage. As I grew up, I started to feel like an imposter and felt embarrassed for how little I knew about my Korean culture. It felt more like my parent’s culture than my own. I originally intended to sew a chima (치마), a traditional Korean skirt, but instead I wove it out of white macrame to represent my barebones knowledge about Korean culture and how my embarrassment can become a net that entangles and traps me. The pendants hanging from the bottom, made of chipboard, are recreations of a necklace I got as a souvenir from Korea, but lost over the summer. I was heartbroken when I lost it and used this as an opportunity to recreate it, but since I had no photos I had to make many variations of it, all of which are hanging from the skirt as both a memento and weight pulling me down. However, the variations of the pendants and repetitive nature of weaving macrame represent the small steps I repeatedly take to reconnect with my family’s culture. The finished piece looks very different from an actual 치마, even to the point where it can be questioned if it even is one, doesn’t have a perfectly symmetrical shape, and has its ends left un-weaved, but it mirrors the very way that I feel towards my Korean identity and promises completion in the future. Even though will never be a real 치마 and the pendants will never be the same as the one I’d lost, I hope that the curiosity and effort dedicated to creating it make up for its disconnection.