Sun Young Kang, Memories, Veiled installation view
If I could only choose one word to describe Sun Young Kang’s works, it would be inversion. Inversions are defined as the state of being reversed in position, changed to the contrary, or turned upside down, inside out, or inward. Experiencing Kang’s work does just that – it changes me to the contrary, beckons me to reorient from the inside out, and turns my receptors inward.
Her works often speak in inversions and her process conveys meticulous acts of time and attention – hundreds of strands of the artist’s hair individually stitched on paper and photograph, incense burned through long scrolls of mulberry paper tracing handwritten script, hundreds of paper cubes and sewing needles suspended from the air with cotton thread. But encountering Kang’s solo exhibition Memories, Veiled on opening night at Yi Gallery, I felt a perceptible shift in approach. Breaking away from intricate patterns and tightly constructed repetitions, her newest work is marked by a haunting austerity that invites viewers to dwell between restraint and release, a thin place between dreamscape and the waking world.
Sun Young Kang, Within the void: reaching for memories I, 2024. Inkjet print on fine art paper, stainless steel, metal wire, translucent fabric, wood frame, 120 x 54 x 42 in.
This will be the first work Sun Young is sharing with the world since her mother in Korea passed away during the pandemic after a years-long period of suffering from Alzheimer’s. She speaks of the feeling of having nothing to hold on to: “My hometown is no longer home without my mother residing there,” her show description reads. “I searched hard but found no traces of her anymore. However, my mother still exists in my dreams, in a world of her own. In my subconscious, I reach out, but reality disrupts the connection.”
Kang conceived her newest project during an artist residency at Yaddo last winter where she found other artists also grappling with grief in their work. Artist Anne Truitt’s journal describes the 19th-century estate in upstate New York as “a place charged with divine force. I always feel it when I enter between the granite gates…a curious heightening of perception.” Memories, Veiled begins from this place: energetic imprints of the Yaddo mansion recorded in photographs overlaid with translucent fabric, hung between sheer curtains suspended from ceiling to floor for viewers to move through before revealing the next photograph.
Sun Young Kang, Within the void: reaching for memories II, 2024. Inkjet print on fine art paper, stainless steel, metal wire, translucent fabric, wood frame, 120 x 48 x 48 in.
Passing through wall after wall of translucent drapery feels like its own stations of grief—a grief of utter aloneness, labored breath, rumpled bedsheets, and momentary clarity. But moving through each station, there is never a sense of being completely alone. No one is pictured in the photographs but each print carries its own presence, someone looking out a blurred windowpane in longing.
Sun Young Kang, Memories, Veiled VII, 2024. Inkjet print on fine art paper, organza, wood frame, 8 x 23 x 1 1/2 in
As the opening night went on, the gallery filled with more voices and movement—people walking through these stations of grief at their own pace. Going through it with others rouses an altogether different experience, and I was moved by the reverence each person granted to the person in the next chamber. Whenever someone took longer in the chamber ahead, others would wait to pass, creating both an intimate and private space alongside one another.
When peering out from the inside of a chamber, you can see what is around through a translucence: other people, other rooms, dispersal of light. The diaphanous curtains give off a delicate impression at first glance, but each chamber possesses a distinct sense of being held and protected – what Robert Frost might call, “a momentary stay against confusion”.
Before entering the final space, an image of an open door greets you. Unlike other rooms, viewers are asked not to pull back the curtain, but to behold the entire set of photographs through textured translucence. Not being able to fully step into what lies behind the veil brings on momentary estrangement, but still the space is imbued with kindness. A source of light refracts through veil and window no matter where you stand, beckoning back into the outflow of things.
Sun Young Kang, Within the void: reaching for memories III, 2024. Inkjet print on fine art paper, metal wire, translucent fabric, wood frame, dimensions variable
Sun Young Kang, selection from Within the void: reaching for memories III, 2024. Inkjet print on fine art paper, metal wire, translucent fabric, wood frame, dimensions variable
The most surprising of reversals in Memories, Veiled may be how a space shaped from grief—that prolonged pain mostly experienced in the solitary cell of one’s own mind—draws viewers into communal witness, where the act of moving through individual griefs together can create a capacity for compassion.
“It took me a year to accept her passing. I felt like I almost couldn’t make art anymore. Instead of making something, I restarted with the space,” Kang shared. “That’s how I came up with this project. Instead of holding something, I wanted to create a space that people can be in.”
“Memories, Veiled: Sun Young Kang,” Yi Gallery, 254 36th Street, B634, Brooklyn, NY. Through July 12, 2024.
Images courtesy of Flaneurshan.studio, Yi Gallery and the artist
About the writer: Susan is a Korean-American poet who writes at the intersections of language, art and culture. Her work has appeared in Honey Literary, Hobart and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. Follow her at smoonlighting.com and @smoon1211
