DIANA UN-JIN CHO
CAAF Residency st[art]@Art Central, July – August 2010
BIOGRAPHY
Diana Un-Jin Cho is a fibre artist. She received a BFA from the Alberta College of Art and Design in 2007. Spending her childhood in Korea then immigrating to Canada, her art is an attempted reconciliation of two dramatically different aesthetic traditions, one of which has a particularly rich textile tradition. Her recent artwork presents rhythmic juxtapositions of hues and lines inspired by the fourteenth century Chogakbo quilting in Korea. She enjoys working intuitively with both new and recycled materials to create sometimes harmonious, sometimes disjointed assemblage of emotive forms and colours to evoke the varied experiences of her life. She currently lives and works in Calgary, AB.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
My work is defined as the interplay of colour, pattern, and texture. Colour has always been a driving force in my work. I enjoy the relationship between colours and the effect it has on emotions. In each piece, I tend to use a wide range of bright, solid colours in order to create an intense colour relationship. I am also interested in producing a visual energy that is created by abstract patterns and uneven texture. On the one hand, I am playing with my materials; I am manipulating colours, and textures within a piece to evoke the senses and the emotions while on the other hand, I am subconsciously revealing my cultural background, creating a hybrid of Eastern and Western aesthetics.
Chogakbo is a form of Korean patchwork originating from the 14th century when Korean women used up their scraps of silk, cotton, ramie, or linen from making clothes to make wrapping cloths and covers. These cloths were used for wrapping many things including precious articles, clothes, and for covering tables of food. Chogakbo was made by sewing remnants of small pieces of cloth together with a multitude of crossing lines not unlike quilting.
My focus during the residency will be on studying Chogakbo designs and reinterpreting them on a series of canvas and cheesecloth using similar colour schemes and designs. In each piece, I will be creating an abstract image with simple geometric shapes and patterns utilizing Korean mulberry papers, cotton, and silk threads. My goal is to produce visual simplicity and vibrancy reminiscent of Korean patchwork and to fill the space with small patches of colours.
For more information, please visit http://www.dianaujcho.com.