Yeesookyung has long dedicated her practice to giving new life to what has been broken. For years, the artist has collected discarded ceramic fragments from master potters’ studios—shards cast aside for the smallest of imperfections—and meticulously reassembled them with seams of gold. Through this poetic process of reconstruction, her ‘Translated Vase’ series transforms rejected remnants into entirely new sculptural forms, charging the medium of porcelain with renewed ontological potential.

Currently featured in 《Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie》 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Yeesookyung’s work takes center stage in the museum’s atrium. This major group exhibition critically reexamines the European decorative style of chinoiserie through a feminist lens. Emerging in 17th- and 18th-century Europe, chinoiserie constructed an imagined fantasy of the East, often distorting and exoticizing Chinese and East Asian aesthetics. It reflected not a real Asia, but rather a projection of European desire—intertwined with orientalist stereotypes, fantasies of femininity, and racialized imagery.

Rather than treating chinoiserie as a mere decorative trend, the exhibition interrogates how this aesthetic played a central role in shaping perceptions of gender, race, and identity. Yeesookyung’s work becomes a powerful metaphor within this framework. Her use of broken ceramics—fused with gold and transformed into complex, organic forms—embodies themes of fragmentation, consumption, regeneration, and feminine resilience. The physical act of repairing and reconfiguring fractured porcelain mirrors the feminist act of reclaiming and rewriting suppressed histories.

A highlight of the exhibition is “Nine Dragons in Wonderland” (2017), a monumental 5-meter-high installation previously shown at the Venice Biennale and later introduced to Korean audiences through a 2022 solo exhibition at The Page Gallery. Composed of shards arranged into a mythic creature, the work draws from East Asian folklore while responding critically to the exoticized spectacle of chinoiserie. In Yeesookyung’s hands, brokenness becomes a new language—speaking to disjointed memories, identity, and cultural displacement.

Yeesookyung’s artistic journey began with an encounter in a ceramic master’s studio, where she witnessed the destruction of seemingly perfect vases for bearing even the slightest flaw. Captivated by the latent beauty and stories embedded in the fragments, the artist began gathering them. Through an intuitive, cell-like process of connecting shards with gold seams, the sculptures evolved into large, living forms—evoking metaphors of growth, decay, death, and rebirth.

The ‘Translated Vase’ series is now housed in major museum collections around the world, including the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The British Museum; Museo di Capodimonte in Naples; and Fukuoka Asian Art Museum in Japan. With her participation in 《Monstrous Beauty》, Yeesookyung once again garners international acclaim.

Fragile yet sharp, porcelain has long served as a metaphor for women. 《Monstrous Beauty》 embraces this symbolism while dismantling the fantasy of chinoiserie, offering instead a space where female narratives are reclaimed, rewritten, and empowered. At the heart of this critical revision, Yeesookyung’s golden seams continue to ask the enduring question: what gets discarded—and what deserves to be pieced back together?

Yeesookyung (b.1963) is one of Korea’s leading contemporary artists. Her practice—rooted in Korean folk beliefs and traditional techniques—engages with the legacy of Western modernism while proposing a distinctly Korean visual language. Working across painting, sculpture, installation, and performance, her poetic and dreamlike works transcend East-West binaries, establishing her as a highly recognized and respected figure in both Korean and global art contexts.

References

• The MET