Romanovs Tragic Tale Grips American Artist
By Cathy Rose A. Garcia
Staff Reporter
American artist Melora Kuhn found an old picture of an unknown family while she was working on a collage earlier this year. She didn't know who the family was, but the aura of sadness captured her interest. Later on, she found out the family were the Romanovs, Russia's last royal family.
Kuhn became fascinated with the tragic life of the Romanovs, which led her to create a series of portraits based on their family album.
``I found this picture of the family, when I was looking to collapse a picture of a family. I didn't really know anything about them. Then I found out who they were and they actually had collapsed as a family. … I am interested in the idea of collapsing society, collapsing family and collapse in general. (Collapse) is a point of complete lack of control,'' she said.
She even found out her great-grandmother was once obsessed with the life of Anastasia, the youngest Romanov daughter whose death was surrounded in mystery and became the subject of several films.
Her fascination with the Romanov family, as well as the concept of ``collapse,'' are recurring themes in her solo exhibition ``The Unraveling Tale'' at Gallery Hyundai. This is her first solo exhibition in Seoul.
When asked about the title for her exhibition, the New York-based Kuhn said it refers to the process of finding out about the Romanovs, ``the way the information was unraveling and endless. I started thinking about kings and queens, and fairy tales, and how it unravels like a fabric that is woven together. And like how fairy tales are the fabric of my upbringing as an American girl.''
Kuhn noted the Romanovs seemed to have been surrounded with sadness, even before their tragic deaths in 1918. She succeeded in conveying the aura of sadness, depicting members of the Romanov family with somber expressions and melancholic eyes.
This is evident in ``Targets'' where two of the sad-eyed Romanov girls have blood-red targets on their white dresses, foretelling their tragic end.
In ``Red Brooch,'' the Empress Alexandra is drawn with a picture of the Annunciation on her head. Kuhn said she wanted to draw a parallel between Mary's Annunciation, and Alexandra's situation where she gave birth to the heir to the throne Alexei, who suffered from hemophilia. ``It's both a huge burden and a great honor,'' she said.
One of her favorite pieces is ``Family Portrait.'' ``There's a lot of elements in the painting that I've been trying to do for many years. It's the idea that your ancestors are always around you. Which is what's great about Korea where there are strong connections to family,'' she said.
However, the main piece for the exhibition is ``Trail Bearer,'' a sculpture of a woman holding a long train that ends up in a heap due to the absence of a woman wearing the dress at the other end. She called this the ``fulcrum'' of her exhibition, symbolizing the collapse of the Romanov family.
Kuhn said she had always wanted to be an artist, and studied painting in Italy for a few years before she graduated with a degree in Painting and Printmaking from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has already had solo exhibitions in New York City, Brooklyn, San Francisco, Boston, as well as group exhibitions in London, Florence and Finland.
The exhibition runs through Dec. 23. Visit www.galleryhyundai.com.