The practice is a key part of Park’s “Close to Home” exhibit, which opens Saturday, July 29, at Dimensions Variable. The show discusses the suui custom with the violent attacks against Asian Americans in the United States over the last several years. Using fabric, wood, paint, and other media, Park’s work asks what is left when a life is taken, especially when a deranged gunman or hate-filled attacker snatches it away.
“That could be my aunt, a friend, or me.”
Her work particularly references the 2021 shooting of eight people, six Asian-American women, at Atlanta-area spas. “That incident shook me to the core,” says Park.
It wasn’t the only outrage that affected her. Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Filipino, and others of Asian background or descent were targeted during the pandemic and beyond. They include the 2022 murder of 35-year-old Christina Yuna Lee, who was followed and stabbed to death in her home on Chrystie Street in New York’s Chinatown. “Chrystie Street” is the title of one of Park’s Dimensions Variable installations.
Jee Park’s"Chrystie Street" references the murder of 35-year-old Christina Yuna Lee and is part of the artist’s exhibition "Close to Home" at Dimensions Variable.
Jee Park photo
She later earned her master's degree at NYU. Park moved to South Florida with her partner and fellow artist Clara Varas in 2000. During a visit to her Allapattah studio, where she was preparing work for the upcoming show, Park explains how she began exploring ideas around grief, remembrance, and anxiety after her father's death five years ago. "Those feelings intensified during the pandemic," she says, and have grown more insistent because of the gun violence epidemic that has roiled the United States over the last few years.
"Chrystie Street" combines a variety of fabrics — muslin, gingham, and pieces of clothing — attached to a wooden frame. There are fragments of lingerie, the arm of a T-shirt, and a handcrafted sock similar to that used in the suui dressing. In the front of her studio, Park has a pair of Singer sewing machines where she transforms with fabric the memory of lives, now flattened, stretched, and deconstructed.
The work "reminds me they may be wearing something, working every day, not knowing their lives are going to be cut short," Park says. "I wanted to capture the everyday lives and that we never know when they are going to be taken away by some crazy hate crime." Swaths of gingham bring to mind picnics and pretty domestic aprons. A box stuffed with a pillow speaks to the confinement experienced during the pandemic.
Park has garnered recognition as an Oolite Arts' Ellies Creative Award winner and has been shown in several galleries, particularly in South Florida and New York. Frances Trombly and Leyden Rodriguez-Casanova cofounded Dimensions Variable in 2009 after deciding to create a project space where they could welcome other artists. They have known Park for some time, meeting her first through her partner, Varas, who has also had a show at Dimensions Variable.
Rodriguez-Casanova notes that he and Trombly use elements that harmonize with Park's work, including fabric and found objects.
"Her work speaks to both me and my partner," says Rodriguez-Casanova, who added that Park's creations have a soft and subtle feel. "It is really using a very light palette with infusions of color," he says, adding that Park's work "is very personal to her," bringing up issues of loss and grief, relatable to many people.
– Karen-Janine Cohen, ArtburstMiami.com
Jen Park: "Close to Home." Saturday, July 29 through September 2023, at Dimensions Variable, 101 NW 79th St., Miami; 305-606-0058; dimensionsvariable.net. Opening reception Saturday, July 29, 6 to 9 p.m.; open Thursday and Friday noon to 5 p.m. and by appointment.
