Resilient Traditions: Korean American Stories Told Through Paper

This work by Steph Rue is a quilt blanket made of hanji. The artist used scraps of paper found in her studio in Sacramento, CA, where she makes hanji herself following the traditional Korean papermaking practice. 

The artist dyed each piece of paper in persimmon juice, then painstakingly cut, hand-sewed, and wove them together with images of her mother and grandmothers as well as pages from the Bible and Buddhist texts.

On the bottom, a Korean phrase is stitched, saying: “My daughter, you deserve to be safe. —Mom.” Rue conceived the work amid rising anti-Asian violence in the United States in 2021. This quilt is, Rue says, “a letter to my daughter. It’s an offering of safety, a beacon."

Jiha Moon layers images found in traditional Korean folk art and contemporary life using ink and acrylic on hanji. Amid a flux of yellow waves —   reminiscent of pop artist Roy Lichtenstein — smiley faces, lotuses, and peony flowers abound. 

Perching on the top is a pair of cranes — a traditional symbol of longevity, as they were believed to live as a pair for a thousand years. The heart icons popping out of each bird recall the “like” emojis often seen on social media.

This functioning lamp by Moon is also packed with visual references from Korean folk art and pop culture.

On the lampshade, which is made of hanji, creatures taken from Korean folktales — such as a rabbit-turtle duo — are screenprinted with acrylic.

Handpainted on the body are images charged with multiple meanings. For example, while the peach has long been a symbol of immortality in traditional Asian culture, it is also a signature fruit of Atlanta, Georgia, where the artist lives and works.

Manipulation of language was one of the most crucial tools Cha employed to explore her identity in a lifetime marked by a series of migrations and displacements. 

As an established printmaker in both Korea and the San Francisco Bay Area, where he moved in 1974, Yoong Bae created works that infused Korean artistic traditions with elements from modern Western art.

Here, the layout of this composition may seem like a silkscreen print, but a closer look reveals that each figure was painted one at a time on Korean book pages. The repetition of figures evokes the tradition of painting hundreds of Buddhas as an act of devotion.