Huh Dong-hwa rises from collector to artist
Huh Dong-hwa, director of the Museum of Korean Embroidery
By Chung Ah-young
For Huh Dong-hwa, “bojagi” is not merely a wrapping cloth. It’s a refined craftwork as a collector and at the same time an object that inspires his aesthetic world as an artist.
“When I first saw the bojagi, it didn’t look like wrapping cloth but a beautifully adorned piece of art,” Huh said in an interview with The Korea Times
.
The 86-year-old collector and director of the Museum of Korean Embroidery has hosted 100 exhibitions since the museum’s opening in 1971. He has a collection of some 3,000 items of traditional Korean embroidery such as folding screens and blinds.
“Collecting bojagi and embroidery works is not easy because they are not widely used today. Also people don’t appreciate our traditional craftworks that much. So when I wanted to get an artwork, sometimes it is sold to foreigners,” he said.
He has a special attachment to “jogakbo,” a kind of wrapping cloth in patchwork, which reveals the past lives of women's quarters, which express their woes and pathos through piecing together fabric.
Needlework was one of the few ways they expressed their aesthetic desires and inspirations under the constrained social atmosphere during the Joseon Kingdom (1392-1910).
“Jogakbo is also a symbol of poverty because many women recycled scraps of colorful fabrics which were left over from sewing. But its patterns are extremely beautiful and look abstract in aesthetics. Jogakbo is highly appreciated by foreigners because they see the piece as an abstract artwork,” he said.
While indulging in artistry of his collection, he has created his own artworks inspired by jogakbo. He also recycles the fabric scraps to create his abstract artwork inspired by the colorful patterns of “jogakbo.” “I am sometimes called an environment artist who reuses textile pieces from traditional cloth. I am showing my artworks through the exhibition as an artist rather than a collector,” he said.
He is holding the exhibition at the Youngeun Museum of Contemporary Art through Dec. 16 to showcase his artworks made from textiles and acrylics.
To promote Korean needlework abroad, he has taken to exhibitions to other countries such as Spain, France, the United States and Japan.
“To host the exhibition overseas, the quality of the collection and academic research should satisfy the standards of the hosts. Once we promote the beauty of our tradition outside Korea, ensuing calls from overseas museums and galleries have rushed to invite us. It was not an overnight achievement but decades-long endeavors,” he said.
Mostly Korean ceramics and paintings which have relatively achromatic colors are highly appreciated by foreigners. But the colors of jogakbo and embroidery works are very splendid and unique, which is hard to be found in traditional Korean culture.
“Such needlework is the highest state of intellectual pursuit of women who had to lead cloistered lives during the era. So they could express the desires suppressed through vivid colors under the Confucian state,” he said.