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Korean Girls Lost In Past Brought Back By Artist Who Uses Makeup As Palette

By Alisa Hauser | December 5, 2016 12:22pm
 Artist Suk Ja Kang in her East Garfield Park studio.
Suk Ja Kang
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EAST GARFIELD PARK —  Young women pulled from the background of vintage family photos have been honored by Suk Ja Kang, an artist who re-imagined her ancestors through hauntingly beautiful collages embellished by a mix of memory, history and dreams. 

Kang, who used eyeliner, nail polish, lipstick and other non traditional art supplies from her makeup bag to create the 13 unnamed women in her "Rite of Memory" series, describes her muses as "young, never-blossomed girls."

During a tour of her studio in East Garfield Park's Albany Carroll Arts Building, 319 N. Albany Ave., Kang said she did not want to use words like "comfort women" or "geishas" to describe the women. 

 Suk Ja Kang with a woman from her Ginseng Series.
Suk Ja Kang with a woman from her Ginseng Series.
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DNAinfo/Alisa Hauser

"I don't want to re-victimize them again [through art]," Kang said.

Using an intensive process of erasure with acetone, oiling, and re-drawing, Kang isolated the women from the background of 1940s-era family photos, where boys and men were always in the foreground — never women.

Kang installed halos and crowns atop the girls' heads, and in one piece, created the outline of a long ballroom gown, as if to dress the young woman in a modern fashion designer's sketch.

View all of the untitled collages.

Originally a newspaper reporter in Seoul, Korea, Kang did not know any English when she came to the United States in the late 1980s and used art as her way to express herself.  Kang went on to create abstract paintings for 25 years and has exhibited her work professionally since 1994.

In 2014, Kang, who lives in Ukrainian Village, was suffering from grief. She did not want to paint. She recalls sitting in her studio and throwing out some of her oil paints. And emptying her makeup bag.

She did not know what she was doing but stayed in her studio for two days straight and began by using nail polish remover containing acetone to transfer portions of the black-and-white photos to translucent mylar sheets and her own red lipstick to bring out the lips of the young women.

"[Artists] are lucky if they have a place to get lost, to not think about anything. I had no plans. I had no awareness of what I was doing. It was keep moving, don't stop," she said.

The inspiration for the women was drawn from two of Kang's aunts, singers and poets, as well as a reoccurring dream that Kang had had for years, a disturbing vision of  "a clumping of girls inside a cave" she says.

The series, featured in a juried exhibition, "Cultural Conversations" at the Los Angeles, Calif.-based Korean Cultural Center in May 2015, also ended the dream, which Kang said she has not had since.

"It was a period of a collective personal loss which invoked me to get back to the memories I was carrying along," she said.

Kang cannot bring herself to sell the works, at least not individually.

"I would only sell them all together, hanging from wire and unframed, so if there is a breeze, it would seem almost like they are dancing," Kang said.

Kang is currently in the midst of "Collide, Collapse, Controlled," a series of 12 pen and ink abstract works on canvas, which she plans to begin showing this spring. For more info, visit Kang's website or send her an email.

All works, below, by Suk Ja Kang:

 

 

 

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