Wonju Seo

Lee Talbot

Curator, The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum Washington, DC

In Wonju Seo’s talented hands, the aesthetics, forms,and techniques of bojagi— traditional Koreanwrapping cloths—are reconfigured as abstracttextile art for a global audience. Born in SouthKorea and currently living in the United States,  Seo combines needlework, painting, photography,and other techniques to create contemplativeartworks that explore her transcultural identityand life experience. As an apt point of departure,she often looks to jogakbo- patchwork bojagi, a time-honored Korean form that finds visualparallels in American pieced quilts and Westernmodernist paintings. Made with natural Koreanfabrics and slow, meticulous methods of handproduction, Seo’s sophisticated color combinationsand abstract geometries reflect the artist’s formaleducation as a painter. The exhibition Travelogueincludes recent projects as well as a selection of previous works that outline Seo’s journey asan artist who bridges mediums and cultures.

              Seo studied painting at Hongik University, one of South Korea’s most renowned art schools,and received a B.F.A. in fine arts painting in 1988.She recalls that during her undergraduate years,“art” became an ever more complicated andburdensome subject for her, and she struggled withquestions of why she should paint and how shecould articulate her own identity and viewpointsin her artwork. Still frustrated by these questionsupon graduation from Hongik, she began workingas a package designer and a textile designer. As apackage designer in a major company, Seo’s tasksincluded design, color correction for printing, and collaboration with other departments. As adesigner in a textile studio, she sharpened her skills in silk painting and developed her understandingand control of a wide range of materials. Afterher marriage in the United States, however, Seoembarked on an artistic path that allowed hergreater personal expression and creativity.

         The springboards for Seo’s new artisticdirection were jogakbo that she encountered in agallery in Seoul in 1989. These wrapping cloths,which dated back to the late Joseon dynasty (1392-1910) or early colonial period (1910-1945), weremade by women who followed a long Koreanlegacy of stitching together textile remnants tocreate functional objects for domestic use. In thesesmall textiles’ masterfully juxtaposed colors andshapes, Seo recognized the visual language offorms, lines, and planes that she had studied andpracticed in abstract painting. Awestruck by theskill, creativity, and lived experience embodied inthese bojagi and others like them, Seo resolved to supplant her brush and paint with needle andthread, and thus help continue and further thisabstract textile art tradition of Korean women.

        For hundreds of years, Koreans of all socialclasses have used bojagi, a general term thatdescribes many different kinds of wrapping andcovering cloths. Used to wrap gifts, cover diningtray tables, and transport and store everyday itemssuch as jewelry and bedding, bojagi protect andsymbolically elevate the objects they wrap, andemphasize the giver’s respect for the receiver. Bojagiused at the royal court and in certain ceremoniesoften were fashioned from single pieces of clothembellished with embroidery and other surfacedesign techniques, but some of the most widespreadexamples we have today are patchwork jogakbo.  Before the Industrial Revolution, textiles wereamong the most costly and cherished objects thatpeople owned because of the enormous amount oftime and labor required to make them. Due to theintrinsic value of fabric, people endeavored to makepractical use of even the tiniest scraps of cloth. As such, Korean women saved textile remnants,and as needed arranged them in pleasing patternsand stitched them together to make jogakbo.

      In the Neo-Confucian worldview that permeatedKorean society during the Joseon period, frugalityand modesty were highly valued, so a beautifulobject created from meager materials received greatrespect.  Buddhism also gave patchwork particularsignificance, as priests’ robes and temple furnishingsoften were made of fabric fragments pieced togetherto dispel the appearance of extravagance. InJoseon-dynasty Korea, lovingly made bojagi werewidely believed to be able to capture happiness andluck, and to imbue the wrapped objects with thesequalities. As mothers, grandmothers, sisters, andaunts pieced together jogakbo, they directed theirprayers, wishes, and positive thoughts toward thehappiness and well-being of their family members so as to instill these textiles with good fortune. 

        Although jogakbo fell out of use during Korea’s period of rapid industrialization andmodernization in the twentieth century, extantexamples began to attract the attention of curators,collectors, and artists in the 1980s and 1990s. Aftermoving to the United States in 1998, Wonju Seofully embraced the textile medium and lookedparticularly to jogakbo for inspiration. Using smallpieces of silk, cotton, ramie, and hemp sourcedfrom hanbok makers in Korea, she created moderninterpretations of jogakbo that honored inheritedtraditions while giving her own imagination freerein. After becoming fully conversant in historicalforms, materials, and methods, Seo began tointroduce new techniques into her work, such as silk painting and embroidery, and to incorporatemixed media such as foam board and found objects.Two-dimensional, rectangular works expanded into three-dimensional soft sculptures, wearablebojagi, and even book art, all of which exploredvarious aspects of Seo’s cultural identity andpersonal experience as a woman with deep roots in Korea but now living in the United States. 

      Seo’s experimentations with shape and form eventually led to the production of large-scaleinstallations, some of which were site specific. WhiteWonderland, measuring more than 30 feet wide and25 feet long, fills a four-story skylight wall in theCharles B. Wang Center at Stony Brook University.Comprising 2,300 textile blocks painstakinglyfolded and stitched in the “seven treasure design”(chilbomun, 七寶文) often found on the doorsof Korean Buddhist temples, this monumentalinstallation, like many of Seo’s creations,evokes personal memories—in this instancechildhood recollections of Seoul transformedinto a “white wonderland” after a heavy snow. The artist’s memories of travel on Korea’s JejuIsland inform Through My Window: Ocean, Skyand Winds. A modern interpretation of hotbo—unlined, single-layered bojagi—this artworkcombines patchwork with painting, photography,and printing in a calming evocation of Jeju’sbeautiful, windswept landscapes. Windows are a recurring theme in Seo’s work, symbolizing for the artist the window through which sheobserved and imagined the outside world duringher childhood. Although the window delineates a boundary of protection and comfort, Seoexplains that “the window also represents mydream and desire to explore the unknown worldlike that of so many Korean women who grew up in a traditional Confucian culture, includingmyself. My work reflects my past—where I came from, to the hopes for my future—where I will be going. From the inside, I boldly throwopen the window and freely play an active roleas a creative and contemporary person.

        Recently Seo has experimented with theexpressive potential of saekshil-nubi—a Koreanquilting technique in which cords of tightly rolledpaper or cotton are stitched between two layers of cloth to create a raised surface. In the past,bojagi made in this exceedingly time-consumingmethod were used to wrap objects that were fragileor susceptible to damage from moisture. In MapDrawing, she employs the three-dimensional lines of saekshil-nubi to map out abstractedtopographies and landscapes real and imagined.Though far removed from the function of saekshil-nubi wrapping cloths, Map Drawing exemplifiesSeo’s deep interest in historical hand-productionpractices and her ongoing quest to expand thetemporal and aesthetic horizons of these traditionaltechniques in contemporary textile art. 

      While continually drawing from the wellspringof traditional Korean textile forms and techniques, Seo also finds inspiration in the lives and historiesof the women who created bojagi in centuriespast. During the Joseon dynasty, when Koreanwomen were barred from receiving a formaleducation and their personal freedoms wereextremely curtailed, textile making was a primaryoutlet through which women articulated theirjoys, sorrows, and creative capacities. Joseonwomen left few written documents of their lives,but some textiles such as bojagi have survived as tangible legacies. The artworks presented in the exhibition Travelogue reflect Wonju Seo’s great respect for the materials, skills, and livedexperiences of her predecessors plus her desire toexpand inherited traditions and give voice to herown time, place, and life story within the historicalcontinuum. Tracing Seo’s personal and artistictrajectory, these works highlight the beauty andconsummate craftsmanship of bojagi as well as theexpressiveness and contemporary relevance of thisquintessentially Korean textile form in the hands ofa gifted artist who so deftly bridges East and West.