Nayoung Jeong
Folding × Doors, 2022
세라믹, 실, 금속
가변 크기
Ceramic, thread, metal
Variable dimensions
Folding × Doors reflects upon barriers and transgressions through the compelling visual analogy of “doors as skins.” Suspended in midair, the installation is composed of a series of screens of different sizes. What may appear to be semi-transparent partitions from afar are made out of meticulously hand-sewn pieces of modular ceramic slices resembling human skin. The thin layers of folded and individualized ceramic components are sutured with red threads. The conjoined fragments therefore generate what the artist describes as “an anatomical landscape,” alluding to her own body and a cartography of divided yet connected lands. Inviting viewers to travel in between and around the hanging screens, or doors, Jeong poetically draws on the dynamics of openness and closure, affiliation and division, power and fragility. In thinking about the concept of the geopoetic, which prompts new forms of associations and comparisons to emerge outside existing geopolitical histories, Folding × Doors builds on the artist’s prolonged interest in cultural displacement and her own body as a register for foreign encounters.
Nayoung Jeong is a sculptor, ceramist, and painter whose work takes form as performance and installation. Exploring identity rooted in heritage and uprooted by globalism, her process-oriented work evokes memories and questions to make the unfamiliar closer to familiar. Jeong was born and raised in Korea, and works and lives in New York and London. She received her BFA from California College of the Arts, and MFA at Rhode Island School of Design. She is recently received Ph.D. at Slade School of Fine Art, UCL (University College London).
Nayoung Jeong, Folding x Doors, 2022, close-up. Courtesy of the artist.