Hyung-Min Yoon’s work uses translation as a means of exploring the complex relationship between language, culture, society, and belief in a globalized world. Her practice is often grounded in archival research and her interest in the history of printed materials.
The illustrations in Black Book, for instance, respond to an antiquarian book of woodblock prints. First published in 1431, and revised through the Joseon Dynasty, the Illustrated Conduct of the Three Bonds collates stories from Korean and Chinese history that exemplify Confucian principles. Drawing on an edition at the National Library of Korea, and focusing on a volume devoted to “Virtuous Women,” the artist collected modern-day jokes and cartoons for her own darkly funny take on the means by which behavioral norms are codified and policed.
Inspired by Albrecht Dürer’s famous pen-and-ink drawing Praying Hands (1508), Magic Hands is a series of silkscreens reproducing images of the hands of saints drawn from other books printed by Dürer, paired with text from a book of magic tricks. Isolated from their original backgrounds, with the accoutrements of magical performance edited out, these hand gestures could be devotional actions or expressions of a secret language. Printed on antique and repurposed paper once used in the same museum in Vienna that houses Dürer’s masterpiece, these works also function as palimpsests of overlaid and obscured histories.
Hyung-Min Yoon, Magic Hands, 2013. series of 14 silkscreens on antique paper. 43 × 33 cm each (53 × 43 × 4 cm framed). Courtesy of the artist
