Mother Tongue, Motherhood, and  Transculturation

By Shin-hee Chin

Cultural context has most shaped my work as I have spent half my life in South Korea and the other half in the United States. I have had equal exposure to two vastly different cultures. In my years of dealing with issues of a bi-cultural lifestyle, art has helped me reconcile the conflicting nature of two different cultural worlds. My work reflects the binary approach – East vs. West, female vs. male, art vs. craft, yin vs. yang, faith vs. (secular) world, figurative vs. nonfigurative, abstract vs. concrete, idea vs. form etc.  All those paradoxes inhabit the same space, just as Asia and America co-exist in me. My worldview has been shaped by my experiences as a woman, a mother, and an immigrant, my work is an effort to draw connections between my inner life and the world beyond.

This project sets out to explore the potential of cultural hybridization to integrate the media and techniques of both traditional Asian and American cultures into new ways of art making.  The two major constituting media - text and cloth – will be arranged as equal ingredients, signifying the coexistence of different cultural legacies in one’s life and communities. I see hand sewing as a process of joining two elements without sacrificing the integrity of each individual element, precluding any hierarchy. Through these pieces, I attempt to translate the experiences of humans in a way that people of different ethnic backgrounds and cultural experiences can understand and empathize with. 

The text is used in each piece as a symbol of a mother tongue that is so fundamental in the fabric of one’s being. I use it to emphasize the critical role language and a system of discourse play in contemporary culture in defining, dividing, and connecting people. It also serves as a connection to our own experiences as once being expatriates from different shores, exposing viewers to the vestige of “the language of the other.” Though language often serves as a tool for exclusion, I use these letters as a sign of an intercultural conversation, an ongoing dialogue.