Father Crosses the Ocean
In her own words, artist Kyungmi Shin takes us on a tour of her painted photowork, which pairs art and family memory.
Juxtaposing an old photograph from Kyungmi Shin's family album with a 14th-century French manuscript, Father Crosses the Ocean explores her family’s experience and cross-cultural impacts between the East and West.
Taken in the 1960s, the background photograph (in black and white) depicts a group portrait of young Christian ministers in South Korea.
The overlaying manuscript, which is in the collection of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, features a French king, his consorting bishops, and a priest on the precipice of a journey to Jerusalem.
Father Crosses the Ocean (2020) by Kyungmi ShinThe J. Paul Getty Museum
In combination, the two images present both ends of a spectrum to Shin: Korean ministers looking to the West for their religious inspiration, and the European rulers and church looking to the East to expand their power.
On the far upper right, you can see Shin's father. In his later years, he suffered from the Alzheimer’s. As a way to understand his life, Shin has been investigating photographs of him from her family album.
Particularly, she wanted to understand the historical forces behind her father's life as a Christian (protestant) minister.
In the early 1960s, Shin's father studied at a seminary school in Korea with many American and Dutch missionary professors and was ordained in the early half of the decade. He spent over 50 years dedicating his life to Christian ministry.
Why did a Korean man born in the 1930s into a country of Confucius culture, Buddhist history, and Shamanistic roots become a Christian Minister?
How did he identify with the Christian crusaders so much that as a high school student during the Korean War, he volunteered to fight in a young soldiers’ troop named “the crusader”?
In the artist’s words:
Father Crosses the Ocean (2020) by Kyungmi ShinThe J. Paul Getty Museum
“The overlaying image is from a late 14th-century manuscript that recounts the history of France that I came across in a manuscript book I borrowed from the public library.
The image depicts King Charles V, flanked by Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV and his son Wenceslaus, and bishops at the head of the table . . .
. . . two servers standing before the table waiting at the pleasure of the dinner guests . . .
. . . a priest on the boat . . .
. . . another server preparing to carve something for the dinner . . .
. . . and on the far right, a war scene.
I was fascinated by this image as it seemed to depict the power plays by the kings, the colonial expansion represented by the boat, and the religious missionary outreach and military expansionism which also served as tools for colonization.
Then I learned that the image depicts the group watching a reenactment of the Crusades—complete with an impressive prop ship captained by the legendary hero Godfrey de Bouillon.
The group portrait of young Korean Christian ministers from my family album seemed to depict the outcome of this colonial and religious expansionism:
Father Crosses the Ocean (2020) by Kyungmi ShinThe J. Paul Getty Museum
The European priest brings Christianity to the other side of the world . . .
. . . and my father who embodied this Christian doctrine all his life.
By juxtaposing these two images in my work, I wanted to reveal the hidden historical relationships between the West and East, the colonial European powers and objects of these colonial explorations and aspirations.
I am also exploring the complicated intertwining of cultures that results from these colonial expansions. “Creolization”—or the convergence of different cultural groups in a colonial territory—that Edouard Glissant talks about in his poignant writings is something that we all experience whether we are immigrants, natives, or transplants within a country. We are all affected by this global expansion: political, economic, and cultural.”
About the artist:
Kyungmi Shin is a Los Angeles-based visual artist working with painting, sculpture, and photography. She received her MFA from UC Berkeley. Her works have been exhibited at Berkeley Art Museum, Sonje Art Museum, Korea, Japanese American National Art Museum, Torrance Art Museum, and the Orange County Museum of Art.
Shin’s work combines many of the aesthetics and subjects characteristic of East and West, and looks at the cultural hybridity of being Asian American and the Korean diaspora, aftermath of immigration and colonization, and themes of belonging and community.
© 2022 J. Paul Getty Trust, Los Angeles
Special thanks to artist Kyungmi Shin for her work on this project and permission to share her art on Google Arts & Culture. Permission to replicate Father Crosses the Ocean has been given for this express purpose and the reproduction of it for any other means is prohibited.
More resources:
Kyungmi Shin's Website
Information on the manuscript Play of the Sacrament from "Reading Medieval Books" blog.
Elizabeth Morrison and Anne D. Hedeman, Imagining the Past in France: History in Manuscript Painting, 1250-1500. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2010, cat. no. 26 (pp. 181-183).
To cite this exhibition, please use: "Father Crosses the Ocean" published online in 2022 via Google Arts & Culture, Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
