Lotus

Ilmin Museum of Art colection
Born in 1939 in Manchuria, Yun Suknam started her career as an artist at the age of forty in 1979. From Half into One held in 1986 in which she also participated has been regarded as an epoch-making exhibition in the history of Korean feminist art, and this attests to the fact that the path of her art has made a significant contribution to the development of Korean art. Old chunks of wood have been used as Yun’s main materials since she discovered a resemblance between the surface of the bough that she picked up in the birthplace of Heo Nanselheon, a female poet of the Joseon dynasty, and the skin of an elderly woman. Lotus shown here is too about the poet. The elongated arm is expressive of the artist’s intent to draw out the thoughts of those females who lived in that time and at the same time represents the process through which humans are to be in an intimate interplay with nature as is the case with the green-tinged hand touching the lotus flower. Its exposure to uncontrollable movement certainly makes it vulnerable, but at the same time its floatation amid air with the help of a swing-like structure signifies the desire to attain as much freedom as a swing traversing the sky. Regarded sacred as a symbol of the sun, birth, and creation in various cultures, the lotus blossom represents revival and renewal in the work of Yun.