Jinyoung A. Jin Ph.D.
Director of Cultural Programs at the Charles B. Wang Center, Stony Brook University (NY)
"Transforming Century-Old Household Items with a Contemporary Sensibility: Wonju Seo’s Textiles"
Born in 1964 in Seoul, South Korea, Wonju Seo hasmade her name as a contemporary artist in New York,specializing in textiles. Though she graduated fromHong-Ik University, one of South Korea’s prestigiousfine art schools, Seo did not pursue her calling as a textile artist immediately. After graduation, sheworked for over four years as a commercial textiledesigner, applying acid dye pigments to silk. It was notuntil 2007 that she completely changed her preferredmedium from paints to sheer textile. Seo herself haspointed to this change of medium as a turning point inher artistic style:
“I was trained to be a painter, but had a job in a textile company. While I was working there, I still pursued my artistic career by primarilyworking with oil on canvas. Soon I serendipitouslydiscovered the purity of silk textile and theintense color and serene abstractness found in an antiquarian Korean patchwork pojagi. Thepiece was almost a century old, but I was visuallyshocked by its vibrant color and geometric shapes.It was so modern and contemporary. It was beyondwhat I used to create with brushes and oil paints.”
Now long based in New York and New Jersey, WonjuSeo is a Korean American artist whose primarymedium has been textiles. In particular, Seo oftenexplores the bold and abstract color sensibilities ofpojagi. Pojagi is a centuries-old traditional Koreanform of patchwork used to wrap gifts, to cover small food tray tables, and to carry around objects of everyday life, from jewelry to heavy bedding. Autilitarian craft form, pojagi was originally made fromthe small pieces of silk, ramie, and hemp left over or discarded in the process of making garments. Sincefabric was incredibly valuable during the Chosŏndynasty (1392–1910), the cutting of textile materialfor any reason other than making clothing wasconsidered highly wasteful, even disgraceful. In thiscontext, the process of combining fabric remnantsand sewing them together into pojagi, to reducewaste and utilize material for practical purposes,was seen as an auspicious act by Korean women. Notonly did creating pojagi demonstrate their frugalityand patience, but every stitch could be seen as anexpression of a woman’s devotion to the comfort andwell-being of her family in the Korean society.
However, the upheavals of Japanese colonial rule,the chaos of world war, and the social turmoil broughton by the Korean War disrupted Korean life and arttraditions. Combined with the influx of ready-madeclothing and textiles made from Western materials,pojagi fell out of use and widespread practice. Koreansfrom this point on only tailored traditional clothing forvery special occasions, such as weddings, funerals, andother ceremonial or memorial events. Furthermore,the recycling of fabric scraps was no longer regarded as an act of virtue. Wrapping gifts and food jars with fabric was still common, but pojagi cloths were replaced by simple sheets of nylon fabric. Thecolorfully sewn silk pojagi slowly disappeared fromhouseholds. This long absence from Korean daily lifeexplains why the “antiquarian pojagi” Seo encounteredfor the first time in late 1990s sparked such a visualsensation. Pojagi had virtually vanished from everydaylife until it was once more brought into the spotlight bythe late Dong-hwa Huh (1926–2018), an avid collector who had opened a textile museum in 1979 to showcasehis vast pojagi collection.
The popularity of pojagi in South Korea nowadaysmay be in part due to its visual linkage to Americanfolk quilts or to Western modernist art, from Bauhaustextile to the geometric abstraction of painters suchas Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) and Josef Albers (1888–1976). Despite the comparisons, no direct influencebetween pojagi and these other genres can besuggested; Koreans have enjoyed the strong aestheticsof abstraction well before its emergence as an artisticmovement in the West. Often copying the designs ofolder pojagi, whether for functional purposes or fordecoration, many local Korean artisans craft pojagi inorder to add vibrant color to life.
Departure
The general public currently uses pojagi for solelydecorative purposes. Wonju Seo, however, createsentirely original variations of pojagi through constantexperimentation. Departing from traditional pojagipatterns, color schemes, and styles, Seo utilizes“domestic” mediums that are radically different and often on a much larger scale. She tries to closelyalign her ethos with contemporary artists whoincorporate their works into architectural spacesand who make sculpture from soft materials. Thisidentity as a contemporary artist rather than a craftartisan helped Seo direct her textiles toward thepublic sphere. She modifies space by introducingthe supple, flexible element of textile and seeks tocreate a new spatial dynamism by means of seams,folds, color, texture, and natural elements such aslight and breeze. Tradition is but the medium of themessage; the message itself depends on the richnessof the artist’s creative sensibility. Seo’s architecturalsoft sculptures have been displayed at Stony BrookUniversity’s Charles B. Wang Center and at the Faroa Colón (Columbus Lighthouse) in Santo Domingo,Dominican Republic.
White Wonderland
Permanently displayed at Stony Brook University’sCharles B. Wang Center since 2015, Seo’s WhiteWonderland is integrated into a four-story skylightwall. [Fig. 15] The patchwork is 32 feet long and 26feet wide, hanging from the center’s fourth floor andreaching to the ground just above a person’s height.In this work, Seo tackles abstract patterns with aradical simplicity of vocabulary and on a giganticscale, aspects that distinguish her work from manyother pojagi artists.
Seo uses simple geometric forms related tonavigation and transforms them to create anotherreality, an entirely new spatial dynamic. But thisdynamism is not due solely to the vastness of thepatchwork; the effect is also driven by the rhythmicsmall patchwork patterns that cover this four-storywall. Through the pattern and the sheer size of thepiece, she wanted the informality of this textilestructure to become a part of the building’s structure.
White Wonderland can be said to be a trulysophisticated and ambitious work solely in terms of itsclassic temple-door pojagi patterns, which maze acrossten columns of 2300 folded quilt blocks. The patchesalso vary in terms of size, the smallest at 3 inches andthe largest being 24 inches. The temple-door patternin Korean pojagi does have an equivalent in techniqueto the cathedral window pattern found in Americanfolk quilting. Although the pattern is repeatedthroughout the work, the folds in the fabric completelytransfigure the effect, exaggerating the work’s flatnessand extraordinary scale.
While aiming for purity and clarity, Seodeliberately avoids precision. Sophisticated thoughSeo’s patterns appear, they are never slick ormechanical. There is something primitive aboutthem that appeals on an elemental level, which to Seoembodies the flexibility of textiles and the essence of pojagi. Due to the large size of the installation, the imperfections are not easily caught by viewers, but they are inherent elements in the hand-sewnpojagi process and complement the emphaticallyhandmade artistic qualities of Seo’s design. Seo’swork carefully preserves the expressive imperfectionsof human craftsmanship with irregular stitches andmany negative spaces in between patterns. WhiteWonderland is all the more vigorous and arresting forthe subtle irregularity of the fabric pieces’ outlines as well. Such a willful asymmetry is another daringfeature of Seo’s work. A reflection of her independent,free-spirited approach to traditional design, itsignifies the strength of her determination not to bebounded by convention.
On the one hand, Seo chose a muted white andgray palette and a subtle yet rhythmic interplay ofvertical and horizontal patterns; on the other hand,Seo dramatically increased the size of her work to atruly massive scale. Although geometric abstractionis not new in pojagi, hitherto it has been limited
to patterns with small repeats. The audaciousmaximization of temple-door pojagi patterns shows Seo strikingly ahead of her contemporaries.Rhythmic variety is also a crucial ingredient inbringing Seo’s work to life. Although limited to awhite color scheme, the folded patterns and usage ofdifferent kinds of white fabric multiply the number ofhues, thereby intensifying its impact.
Seas of Blue
Seo’s growing confidence in creating large-scaleworks that are integrated into architectural spaces,sometimes to startling effect, is apparent over
the course of her artistic career. Her audacity andbravado in the use of color is particularly noticeablein the work, Seas of Blue. [Fig. 20] Seas of Blue, which is another creative usage oftraditional pojagi, was on display at the Faro a Colónin the Dominican Republic from 2014 to 2017. It wascommissioned by the Embassy of the Republic ofKorea as part of a larger exhibition by the Dominican government to showcase the art, culture, and history of more than forty-eight countries. Inaugurated in 1992 in commemoration of the 500th anniversary ofColumbus’s discovery of the Americas, Faro a Colón is a memorial monument dedicated to ChristopherColumbus. A 680-foot corridor functioned as the galleryfor this artistic presentation. Although its ceiling is fivestories high, most nations used just the gallery’s floorspace for their displays. Only one country, and oneartist, utilized the monument’s high ceiling.
Seo’s site-specific exploration of indigo pojagiconsisted of six hanging bolts of flexible silk. Bysuspending the fabric from a beam three storiesabove to hang just to a person’s height on the groundfloor below, Seo radically multiplied the given galleryspace. The scale of the pojagi—a stunning twenty feetin length—evoked the vastness of the ocean and thevariability of its waves. The different hues and sizesof the massive patchwork pieces also generated aradiating effect for the viewer, while a steady rhythmpulled the eye through multiple layers. The gallery isconnected to an exterior corridor, so natural light andthe outdoor breeze added to the work’s presentationas a whole. There is something intrinsically appealingabout the flowing effect of the silk through thesenatural elements. Seo’s objective was to integratethese forms carefully into the architectural spacewithout destroying its innate qualities whilesimultaneously modifying the space, modulating it togive viewers a new perception of it.
In stark contrast to the intricate micropatterns of White Wonderland, Seas of Blue utilized bolder,larger, and more loosely patched fabrics, overlapping in a range of rich indigos and blues. Inspired by thenearby sea, Seo was likely trying to evoke the fluidityof waves and the depth of the sea’s color.
Conclusion
The innovating textile artist Wonju Seo blurs theboundary between traditional craft, geometricabstract painting, and architectural sculpture with her vibrant textile works. Her works come in in many shapes, sizes, and effects, ranging from wall mountings that mimic hung paintings to soft sculptures that hang from ceiling to floor liketextured columns. Maximized and minimalist inequal measure, Seo’s works are at once restrained andexpressive, expansive yet condensed.
Although Seo’s works stand out due to their grandsizes, she begins on a much smaller scale to bettercommand all the elements of the piece and to allowher to imagine the structure at full scale. These typesof projects fascinate her more than any other. Theyenable her to influence architectural spaces and tolink the small stitches of domestic sewing to the loud,public life of the modern city. The two large-scaleartworks discussed here perfectly capture how Seorevitalizes the traditional, practical, and spiritualvalues inherent in Korean pojagi in our contemporaryage. She demonstrates that traditional craft textilesare more than up to the task of adapting to ourpresent times and engaging with today’s modernsensibilities. An art that has been passed down forgenerations, pojagi continues to show that it is aflexible and practical art form that can be reworked,rethought, and recycled.