The special exhibition 'Wearable Art: Inspiration in Thread'

Displayed in this exhibition are 百壽紋袍 or costumes decorated with the characters wishing for long life and the folder embroidered with the letters of longevity in the Qing dynasty of China were shown. In Seonghosaseol written by Yi Ik, there was a phrase ‘The first thing of 福 is a long life because you cannot do good things unless you live long’. 百壽紋袍, as the name shown, had many characters of life ‘壽’embroidered on it and was a cloth which included meaning of wishing the long life of a mother. In the same exhibition, the modern art work titled “Mother Tongue” by Shin Hee Kang also includes characters and letters. In this work, long linen, like a cover of altar used in rituals, was added onto an everyday life cloth and the surface of the cloth was sewed with great detail of basic letters and symbolic words of communication of a mother’s nation. It was a different language from mine, but it was the language of their mother, and the root and desire crested deep in their heart. Thus, pattern of character is straightforward but has deeper meaning expressed in symbolic designs.