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Jayoung Yoon in her studio at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City, where she has a yearlong residency.<\/p>\n
Michelle Falkenstein\/For the Times Union<\/p>\n
Last August, artist Jayoung Yoon began a yearlong residency at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City. Several days a week, she travels from Beacon, where she lives and works, to a bright studio on the museum\u2019s sixth floor.<\/p>\n
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At the front of the studio stand several clear vitrines, each holding a different artwork. One contains a sheer black vessel with five small white vessels nestled inside it. Delicate and fragile, the piece looks like it would blow away in a breeze. And there\u2019s good reason to think so: \u201cThe Offering Bowl 07\u201d (2022) was woven and knotted by Yoon using her own black hair and her mother\u2019s white hair, one of several in a series.<\/p>\n
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This tender meditation on motherhood and connectivity is just one of the many meticulous artworks made by Yoon using hair, both human and equine. In addition to weaving hair, Yoon also uses it as one would a pencil line to \u201cdraw.\u201d She also embroiders hair onto fabric. Weaving hair is painstaking work, and a single sculpture can take three or four months to complete.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe hair has some spiritual power,\u201d Yoon said. \u201cI\u2019m interested in mindfulness and interdependence.\u201d She finds inspiration in Buddhist philosophy and quantum physics, hoping her work creates contemplative experiences for her viewers.<\/p>\n
In 2019, Yoon participated in an artist\u2019s residency at Millay Arts in Austerlitz, and this year she was chosen to participate in a group show of Millay Arts alumni. \u201cWith Quiet Eyes\u201d opened at Time & Space Limited in Hudson on May 23 and runs through June 20. Yoon has three \u201cOffering Bowls\u201d made of hair in the show.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith Quiet Eyes\u201d<\/p>\n
Where: Time & Space Limited, 434 Columbia St., Hudson Monika Burczyk, Millay Arts executive director, praised Yoon\u2019s development as an artist since her residency.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Make the Times Union a Preferred Source on Google to see more of our journalism when you search.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s really evolved in the best possible way,\u201d Burczyk said. \u201cI think the use of her own hair is something that is really intriguing for people and intrinsic to her practice. She expanded her material choices, and that speaks to a maturity in her work.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe Offering Bowl 02,\u201d one in a series of intricate pieces Yoon made using her hair.<\/p>\n Courtesy of Jayoung Yoon<\/p>\n Yoon, 46, was born in Seoul, South Korea, the second of three children, and earned her BFA and MFA from Hongik University in Seoul in 2004. She came to the U.S. to study at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan and received her MFA in fiber arts there in 2009.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Her work has been exhibited at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Hudson Valley Museum of Contemporary Art in Peekskill, and Seoul Olympic Museum of Art, among others. In addition to Millay, she has attended residencies at MacDowell in New Hampshire, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado, and Sculpture Space in New York.<\/p>\n As a child, Yoon says she was sensitive to past family traumas \u2014 the Japanese occupation of Korea during World War II, the Korean War, the death of young siblings for both of her parents, the division of the country \u2014 and she wanted a way to cleanse herself of these collective recollections and move forward.<\/p>\n \u201cI was looking for materials that deliver bodily sensations and represent memories,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Yoon began by using her own hair, growing it long and shaving her head. For a performance at Skowhegan in 2009, she wove an abstract structure from her shaved hair that pointed into her ear and extended up into a cloud shape, like a thought bubble. She built a large white cube box, installed it in an open field, and lay naked inside the box with the sculpture emanating from her ear for 10 hours with five-minute breaks per hour.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cIt was transformative for me,\u201d she said. \u201cI began a meditation practice after this.\u201d<\/p>\n Jayoung Yoon\u2019s worktable at her studio at the Museum of Arts and Design.<\/p>\n Jayoung Yoon<\/p>\n In 2023, Yoon spent a month on Jeju Island, South Korea\u2019s largest island, to learn 14th-century hat-weaving methods. She now makes traditional Korean hats using horsehair, which must be wet when woven or it can easily snap.<\/p>\n When working with human hair, Yoon first washes it in baby soap, lets it fully dry, and examines it for imperfections. She then weaves and knots it on maple, cherry and cypress wooden forms that she carves herself on a wood-turning machine. In addition to the offering bowls and abstract forms, she has used hair to make sculptures of gloves, socks, shirts and a human skull.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Once each piece is finished, she submerges the whole assemblage into boiling water for 20 minutes, fully drying it before removing the weaving. Other materials that have appeared in her work include milkweed seed fiber, bird skeletons, thorns and feathers.<\/p>\n Yoon is currently working on a series called \u201cThe Fabric of Energy,\u201d inspired by a shape called a torus, which looks like a puffy donut. In this geometric form, energy flows out from a central axis, curves around the exterior, and returns to the center in an infinite, self-sustaining loop.<\/p>\n For one of the pieces, Yoon is soliciting hair donations of 10 or more strands that are at least 3 inches long. The hair should be gathered from brushing, combing or cutting, but not from the drain. Yoon also asks donors to tell her what positive energy they want to contribute to our world. Details can be found on her website<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Fabric of Energy,\u201d a new piece Yoon is working on.<\/p>\n Courtesy of Jayoung Yoon<\/p>\n Lydia Brawner, the deputy director of education at the Museum of Art and Design, said that over 3,000 children from New York City public schools visit the museum each year. Yoon\u2019s work was like nothing they had seen before.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cShe uses a very traditional Korean process and turns it into a modern idiom,\u201d Brawner said. \u201cThe response has been amazing. People are excited by what she\u2019s doing.\u201d<\/p>\n Yoon sees interconnection as not just a spiritual idea but as something increasingly visible in the world.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are already woven together \u2014 we have never been separate,\u201d she said. \u201cIf my work can do anything, I hope it offers that experience.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jayoung Yoon in her studio at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City, where she…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":250298,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4982,38895,611,844,9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-250297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-arts","tag-hvculture","tag-hvexp","tag-latestnews","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
When:\u00a0Galleries open daily at noon. Show is up through June 20.
More info:\u00a0timeandspace.org\/galleries<\/a>. Free admission.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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