fabric house is intended to discuss family communal culture and gender sensitivity by focusing on pro-feminist decorative expressive textile craftworks and installations that function within the structure of a house. The six artists Kim Taeyoun, Shin Seunghye, Oh Serin, Oh Seungah, Oh Hwajin, and Lee Soonjong, all of whom have prolifically created artworks transcending genres, address the concept and functions of families within a social structure by exploring the internal structure of a house. As a crafting community, these artists also probe into femininity manifested as love for family and humanity by producing furniture, curtains, lighting, covers, and frames and assigning them new meanings. Drawing upon their personal experiences, all six artists have examined issues of feminine taste and otherized taste, the disparities in the tastes of people from different social classes, practical means to achieve gender equality and care for neglected others, and the contemporaneous meanings of communal culture.

fabric house here refers to a house made of fabric, and the structure of a house. Moreover, it is a compound term with fiber, fabric, or female, and “house” representing Red House as a spiritual community of John Ruskin, William Morris, and the Pre-Raphaelites and a space for their collective activities. This exhibition is designed to initiate a discourse on pro-naturalistic craft, acknowledge craft production, and ponder the meaning of Morris’s art community that envisioned an equal society based on collectivism and the idea of securing productivity through collaboration within small groups, including female craft communities. It also explores the contradiction between such a female craft community’s rather male-centric and anti-historicist attitude and its longing for ideal equality. Moreover, paradoxical aspects of the female craft community are discussed in this exhibition: masculine house art versus gender-equal and gender-sensible house art; toughness versus flexibility; firmness versus fluidity; and decorativeness versus naturalness. Thus, by focusing on the practical structure of such a craft community, fabric house reflects upon equality in society as well as on gender and all things.

fabric house is an endeavor to find significance in the contemporaneous discourse on craft beyond its functionality, beauty, and broad expression. Craft has focused on developing a wide range of media and techniques, and also made meaningful attempts at transcending design and the fine arts. Nevertheless, the identity of craft is still determined by the other. Although craft has expanded its boundaries, it continues to be recognized as functional, labor-intensive, media-oriented, and expressive. This exhibition aims to question these limitations and highlight the relations, boundaries, and communal values revealed in the process of crafting practices. By emphasizing the shared meaning and social values of craft (工藝, gongye) as common art (公藝, gongye), fabric house provides opportunities to discuss craft and share it as contemporaneous language.

Even though craft preceded the fine arts among humanity’s cultural and artistic undertakings, it was regarded as less refined and inferior to the fine arts since they emerged at different times and craft was functional. Mass production and industrialization based on mechanical development and specialization supplied different types of labor, creativity, and inspiration to craft and led it to be distinguished from design. Accordingly, craft is known to have retained its distinctiveness due to its separation from the fine arts and divergence from design. However, as our lives and surroundings have diversified, human activity and culture have continued to be shared and shaped as something “crafty.”

fabric house is a collaborative exhibition featuring the participation of six artists manifesting dynamic practices and languages. A workshop was held prior the opening of the exhibition to share its meanings. The exhibition seeks to problematize William Morris’s art community that emphasized the common good and equality, pay homage to the artworks of the Pre-Raphaelites who illustrated the humility and lyricism of Mother Nature, and establish a genealogy of eco-feminism. Based on gender sensibility, the six artists created and displayed artworks that function inside a house, something which not only provides protection, stability, relaxation, and care, but also embodies communication, equality, and social significance. All of them base their artworks on family relationships, and family bonds provide a source for their artistic practices. In Korean society, women have traditionally attempted to form a family, devote themselves to giving birth and raising children, and been responsible for taking care of both their own nuclear family and aging parents. Throughout their lives, Korean women have not seemed to mind unconditionally sacrificing themselves for their family. The situation of Korean female artists does not differ greatly from that of Korean women. The artworks presented in fabric house are closely related to this structure.

Kim Taeyoun gathers plastic bags, which are unthinkingly used and thrown out as part of daily life, and transforms them into precious objects. Using cords made from plastic bags, she creates a spiderweb-chandelier that prompts questions about the co-existence of nature and humanity. Shin Seunghye, who here examines the issue of equality, installed painted and sewn pieces to create a sense of space and pictoriality. When her mother died after years of struggling with illness, Shin became obsessed with human organs. In this exhibition, she immerses herself in the stitching of pieces in the shape of human organs. Oh Serin expresses close family bonds and sorrow by creating artificial circumstances for her grandfather, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. Her artwork articulates social desires manifested through the longings of a head of household who has lived throughout modern Korean history.

As a projection of her subconscious and desires, Oh Hwajin naturally dissects a human body and recombines the parts into a new form through a laborious process of sewing, cutting, and addition. Oh builds tension by visualizing and contraposing personal and pubic desires. To her, the conflicting concepts of natural femininity and distortion by suppression and production coexist in the female body. Oh Seungah creates her own contemporary fabrics from diverse textile materials and using various dyeing, silk screening, and printing techniques. She creates large-scale three-dimensional installations, such as a window, out of red fabric. In doing so, the artist explores the concept of image. Her works describe images of nature in the distinct fluid and unconstrained patterns of textiles. They further encourage viewers to speculate on femininity and otherized female tastes. Lee Soonjong appropriates the image of Beauty by Sin Yun-bok and the image of Mary Magdalen, who greeted Jesus by anointing his feet, thus recalling an eroticism in which the sacred and secular overlap and position females within social and cultural contexts. ■Sewon Oh, Director of CR Collective (Translation: Shinhee Park)