When embroidery becomes art

Thread artist Son In-sook poses with the folding screen titled “A Dialogue With Life” at the Gaepodong Exhibition Center for Yewon Silgrim Art and Culture Foundation in southern Seoul. / Courtesy of Yewon Silgrim Art and Culture Foundation

By Kim Ji-soo

The exhibition center for thread artist Son In-sook is located in the most unlikely place: on the first floor of a four-bedroom apartment in Gaepo-dong, southern Seoul. Son used to live there but now uses the space to show her thread artworks. Son, 63, an artist of threads, creates her unusual works using just needle and thread eight floors up.

In the exhibition center, Son showcases her version of Joseon (1392-1910)-era painter Shin Yoon-bok’s “Portrait of a Beauty.” Unlike traditional Korean embroidery, which is done on a blank silk background using only the five traditional colors of red, yellow, white, black and blue, Son’s works recreate a picture’s background on the silk in a calm hue.

An up-close look at Son’s handwork including the use of human hair for the woman’s hair part in her version of Shin Yoon-bok’s “Portrait of a Beauty.”

“My thread art goes back to when I was 10 years old in Busan,” Son said in an interview with The Korea Times. She is also the chief director of Yewon Silgrim Art and Culture Foundation.The world "silgrim" means thread art.

“My mother, who was an educator, an exceptional person of her time, saw my talent and encouraged me,” she said. She said her mother encouraged her to look at objects from various perspectives and to deconstruct them so that she could create a new work.

Son’s rendition in thread art of Shin Yoon-bok’s “Portrait of a Beauty”

Abiding by her mother’s words and teachings, Son went on to create an extraordinary collection of thread art. The term “thread art” simply refers to Son’s take on traditional Korean embroidery, upon which she innovated on technique and the types and colors of threads. The Guimet Art for Asian Art has seen her works — thousands of which are stored in a separate warehouse in Jukjeon, Gyeonggi Province — and wants to show them next October in Paris, France. President Sophie Makariou of Guimet Museum ofAsian Art said that she was happy to introduce the “exquisiteness and elegance” of Korean culture Son’s work embodies. The exhibition is part of the museum’s two-year celebration for the 130th anniversary of the relationship between South Korea and France. In her rendition of Shin’s “Portrait of a Beauty,” Son used real human hair for the subject’s hair and a variety of colors including tan and jade. Son also used motifs that one would usually see at the ceiling of Korean temples, recreating geometric patterns and then framing the work to give a modern feel.

President Sophie Makariou of Guimet Museum of Asian Art looks at the traditional Korean madeup work stored in a traditional Korean closet at the Gaepodong Exhibition Center in southern Seoul.

In one large room, she features an eight-fold screen depicting the four seasons of spring, summer, fall and winter. Unlike with “Portrait of a Beauty,” Son’s needle and thread ran freely over the screens, as if she wanted to express her freedom as much as she can with her needle and thread. “Isee unlimited freedom in needle and thread,” she said.

While showing the work, she said she valued the winter season the most, “because it’s that season of patience before spring blossoms.”

A 50 by 24 centimeter work depicting “Spring”

In one smaller room, across from the large room where the large folding screen of the four seasons stood, Son displays three thread artworks that defy imagination. The works were so life-like that for aminute, an observer might think that the works depicting a forest trail was a photograph. “This is the trail that I walk almost every day,” Son said, explaining how she used short strings and fine needles to create the micro-fine texture that renders the works a life-like image.

In another one of her interesting works, she used the waste threads from silkworms at a university lab.

wooden letter barrel the ends of which Son has embroidered with tan/golden strings

“Now, those threads are thick, not fine like the ones that are commercially used. So I asked for permission to use them, to show what can be done with just a simple needle and thread,” said Son. With the thicker and coarser threads, Son created a thread art that looked something like a whirling typhoon. With her exceptional artworks, one has to wonder why Son is not more publicly known or designated a cultural asset. Son, who is a graduate of Ewha Womans University in Seoul, said she exhibited her work after graduation. But after a while, she decided to focus solely on the needle and thread because she didn’t want to deal with the bureaucracy, talks and other distractions. Also, not being a designated cultural asset gives her more freedom to adopt modern methods such as using imported colors to dye her threads or sewing in whirls, zigzags and other non-traditional styles.

A wooden box’s rim is decorated with embroidered phoenix and flower

“My mother always said, show your art when you feel it’s true,” Son said. She now feels confident enough to show her work to the public. She doesn’t know which of the works will be featured at the Guimet Museum of Asian Art, but there have been reports that “Portrait of a Beauty” will be displayed along with two traditional Korean attires owned by the museum. Also, museum officials who visited Seoul also viewed her work, “Water, Moon Gwaneum,” which was rolled up in one of the living rooms in the Gaepodong exhibition center.

She actually made two 3-by-5 meter thread art versions of “Water, Moon Gwaneum,” which was based on the Bodhisattva, who’s known for compassion. One of the versions, a replica of the faded “Water, Moon Gwaneum,” is now stored in Japan. The second version is Son’s imagination of how the real 14th-century “Water, Moon Gwaneum” would have looked like before the tear and wear.

“One of the reasons that I do this is because I want to convey how traditional Korean embroidery is reinterpreted in the 21st century, so that our posterity can perhaps see the tradition before the wear and the tear,” Son said.

It’s because of her dedication to creating thread art and to reinterpreting Korean tradition that she does not sell her work.

Her works also include small items, like shawls and handbags, that female consumers crave, but she does not. How does she finance her work? “I am fortunate in that I have a very supportive husband.”

She plans to open a museum of thread art in Suseo, southern Seoul, soon.